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Stuff that Powerpro replaces

eafarris — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:34:42 -0400

A running list of the utilities that I find that can be replaced by Windows Powerpro.

TitleBarClock
Freeware that puts the date, time and unused RAM in the titlebar.
Windows DM2
Freeware that does a number of things: Minimize to an icon (not sure that Powerpro can do that, but it can make floating bars with active app icons), minimize to tray, hide window, align and resize, opaque and always-on-top windows, mark favorites in the open/save common dialogs. All but that first one are quite possible in Powerpro.
SlickRun
Freeware providing a floating command line interface with aliases. As far as I can see, Powerpro provides 100% of its functionality.
Xecutor
Free (for non-commercial use) utility that can execute commands at scheduled intervals or startup/shutdown, not unlike cron in Unix.
sTabLauncher
A tab-based launcher for Windows.
Texter
A tray utility that keeps snippets of text and can insert them into any edit area. PowerPro not only lets you send any keys to any app, but it creates a “snippets” command list on installation, and it can pop up this list with any combination of mouse/key commands (not just yet another icon in the system tray).
PhraseExpress
A ‘snippet’ utility, that allows short passages of text to be quickly pasted into the active application. PowerPro has a ‘snippets’ menu just for this purpose, and can activate those snippets in other ways as well.
Pistachio
A bunch of tweaks for the Windows UI. At least some of these are entirely doable in Powerpro.
ClickWhen
A small tool to automate mouse clicks. Easily doable with Powerpro’s macros and scheduled tasks.
PowerMenu
Adds some extra choices to the window menus. Most of these are by default part of Powerpro’s “activewin” list, and the rest could be added.
RunMe
Allows for the creation of a bar with hierarchial lists of programs to run. Should sound totally familiar, because that’s one of Powerpro’s main functions.
WinOff
A free utility that can shut down a Windows computer, or cause it to enter the various low-power states, based on several criteria, including time-of-day and time-from-now. It certainly appears that PowerPro offers that whole feature set.
ShellEnhancer
PowerPro can do most of the tricks listed. Roll up windows, set transparency, enhance the secondary click menu, screen corners, and the like.
SysTrayMeter
Puts an icon in the system tray that gives indications of system load.
ClickZap (scroll down, no direct link)
Adds a double-secondary-click action.
The Wonderful Icon
Adds a tray icon with several utilities, all of which seem to be doable with Windows PowerPro.
Hotcorners
Adds actions to corners of the screen. Powerpro can do this, and has tons more options for what the action is.
Wallpaper Shifter
Grabs a random file from a directory to be used as wallpaper on login.

Disk Inventory X

eafarris — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:38:30 -0400

Disk Inventory X is a utility for Mac OS X that graphically shows the type and size of the files on your hard disk. It is invaluable for finding where your disk space went, particularly if it happened suddenly:

[inline:DIX.png]

Note the above 18GB log file.

Resources

Disk Inventory X Official Home Page

The GIMP

eafarris — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 07:45:42 -0400

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is an open-source bitmap graphics editor. While it aspires to be an alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop, it has an incredibly quirky interface and is often cited as an example of what’s wrong with open source/free software, as it is an incredibly powerful program hiding behind a decidedly new-user-unfriendly interface.

The GIMP provides most of my graphics needs. As I’ve never used Photoshop, I do not mind the interface quirks and am used to them by now.

The GIMP is also a historic part of open source. During its creation, the authors decided to uncouple the UI controls from the program proper, creating what they called the Gimp Toolkit. What is now known as the GTK is at the heart of the GNOME open source desktop and lots of gui software for Linux.

Ports and Versions

GIMPshop is a project that attempts to rearrange the interface to be more like Photoshop

Resources

Removing backgrounds in the GIMP
A set of tutorials on creating “Web 2.0” style graphics: ‘wet-floor’ shadows, emblems, gradient buttons, and the like.
How to convert your digital photos into realistic photo prints. This is a Photoshop tutorial, but it should work with the GIMP.

Quicksilver

eafarris — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 08:18:45 -0400

On the surface, looks like yet another applauncher for Mac OS X. But it does a whole lot more. Surpasses Windows PowerPro as the greatest interface addition to an OS that I’ve ever worked with. The first thing I install on a Mac.

Resources

Stuff that Quicksilver replaces
A node in my wiki that lists all of the other pieces of software for Mac OS X that can be replaced with Quicksilver.
Quicksilver Official Site
A Beginner’s Guide to Quicksilver
A very nice introduction to Quicksilver from the good folks at Lifehacker.
Mac Guides: Quicksilver
Another guide to Quicksilver from MacRumors.
From a Better OS X to Even More
An intermediate tutorial on Quicksilver.
Gold Trigger
Even more totally amazing things you can do with Quicksilver.
A Screenshot Tour of Quicksilver
Slashes, Appends, and Proxies
From LifeHacker, a look at some of the more advanced features of Quicksilver.
A Google TechTalk Video from A1c0r himself (flippers and all) on the basics and philosophy in Quicksilver.

Drupal

eafarris — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 14:42:13 -0400

Drupal is my Content Management System of choice. A very dense platform for everything from blogging to storefronts to commercial sites to grassroots campaigns. It has a very active development community, pristine code and programming interfaces, and very few security problems. Drupal is released under the GNU Public License.

Just about every web site I’ve done since 2002, including this one, has been Drupal-based.

I contribute back to the codebase every so often, and am the author of the freelinking.module and prepopulate.module.

Resources

Official Site

Apple TV

eafarris — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:08:16 -0400

The Apple TV (or, more correctly, the ?tv) is a set-top box designed to play back media from an iTunes library. The original model shipped in March 2007.

[inline:appletv.jpg]
image from apple.com

Among its features (besides the normal stunning design from Apple) is its internal 40GB hard drive, 802.11n wifi networking, and the Front Row-ish interface with the dead simple Apple remote.

The ?tv does not have any recording capabilities, and lacks a tuner, so its function is limited to playback only. Basically, it’s a large, stationary video iPod that uses your television for its display and speakers. it can be synced over ethernet, either wired or wifi.

In addition to playback of synced content, computers running on the local network can stream media to the device.

Take Two

At Macworld 2008, Apple introduced movie rentals from the iTunes store, including from the Apple TV, and a brand new interface for the unit. Dubbed the “Apple TV Take Two” by the media (Apple itself doesn’t distinguish between versions), the hardware is largely unchanged. A software update was pushed out for older units.

Resources, Hardware and Software version 1

AnandTech unboxes and disassembles a unit. Also see part two.
Rogue Amoeba blabs five secrets, including the revelation that it works with (at least some) standard definition TVs.
The unofficial FAQ From O’Reilly
MacWorld’s First Look includes some common questions and answers.
The MacRumors review
AppleTVHacks, a repository of warranty-voiding modifications you can make to your AppleTV
The MacWorld Review
The Ars Technica review. Top notch, as usual.

Resources, “Take Two”

Macworld Magazine reviews the “Take Two”
RoughlyDrafted’s review of the “Take Two.” Also see part 2 of the review.
ArsTechnica takes a quick look the Take Two
ArsTechnica’s longer review

mutt

eafarris — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:27:32 -0500

(stub)

“All mailers suck. This one just sucks less.”

My mailer of choice. Doesn’t bother with things like mail filtering, editing, address books, or the like, since those tasks are better handled by other software. Terminal-based, extremely customizable. Though people might look at you funny because you’re not using Thunderbird (a very nice Mail User Agent (MUA) indeed), your email life will be considerably less painful with mutt.

Resources

Charles Mauch’s mutt page
Resources and sample files for mutt
mutt manual
Official documentation

iPhone

eafarris — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:20:47 -0500

Apple’s cell phone. Some said it would never happen. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at MacWorld on 9 January, 2007.

Image from apple.com

The phones began shipping on 29 June 2007, at $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model. A 16GB model was introduced at Macworld 2008.

SDK and iPhone 2.0

At a special event on 6 March 2008, Apple introduced the SDK and offered a preview of version 2 of the iPhone software, with Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology for pushing events (email, calendar) from Exchange servers. The SDK will use a modified version of Xcode, a new library called Cocoa Touch, and an iPhone emulator to allow third-party developers to build native applications for the iPhone.

Resources

Gizmodo’s hands-on at MacWorld. Also see part 2.
Phil Schiller demos the iPhone on CBS.
David Pogue’s Ultimate iPhone FAQ, or, at least ultimate today, three days after the launch. Also see part 2.
Jason Kottke’s excellent roundup
Mike Elgan’s piece (from Computerwold and Macworld) on how Steve Jobs blew the keynote when he announced the iPhone. Some excellent points.
Andy Ihnatko spends 45 minutes with the iPhone

Super Smash Bros.

eafarris — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 08:20:19 -0400

A hallmark of Nintendo console gaming, beginning with the original Super Smash Bros. for the N64, SSB Melee for the Gamecube, and SSB Brawl for the Wii.

The game is typically simple by Nintendo standards: All of Nintendo’s best-loved franchise players all get together and beat the crap out of each other. Easy enough for a button-masher to win matches, yet there are subtle strategies that you can employ that rewards the player who actually learns the moves.

SSB Melee was released in 2001 and was still on the GameCube charts at the introduction of the Wii in 2006. When my sons convince me to pick up a GC controller, it’s typically for SSB.

Resources

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

The Ars Technica review

launchd

eafarris — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:11:11 -0400

Launchd is an Apple construct designed to replace the various methods of launching daemons in Unix: cron, init.d, inetd, etc., including triggers based on the filesystem. It was first included in Mac OS X 10.4, “Tiger.”

Resources

launchd’s creator, Dave Zarzycki, talks about launchd at Google. He discusses the circumstances that lead to launchd’s creation, the problems it solves, and goes into some depth on how it works and how to use it. He also discusses some changes to launchd coming in Mac OS X 10.5.
launchd in depth from AFP548
All about launchd items from MacGeekery
Some launchd recipies, also from MacGeekery, shows some scenarios for using launchd.
Apple’s Developer’s Connection has some tips on getting started with launchd.
Bug reports, SubVersioN trees, and more at the official macosforge page.

eric Farris

eafarris — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 14:16:18 -0400

The website you’re now on is the creation of eric a. Farris, the Systems Administrator for the Appalachian Laboratory, in Frostburg, MD, part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

My education is quite slight, consisting solely of a High School Diploma in 1989 (Frankfort High School, Short Gap, WV), and an A. A. S. in Computer Programming in 1991 (Potomac State College, Keyser, WV). And that’s it. The careful reader will note that no where in there is a study of Information Technology, no courses about the OSI model of networking, no fluffed-up certifications. I’ve gotten this far (though it’s not entirely clear how far this really is) in the IT and Systems world the old fashioned way.

The jobs I’ve had since college have all been systems related, beginning as a part-time laboratory assistant in the computer labs at Allegany College. Since then, I’ve had the most fun at work maintaining large installations of computers and doing custom programming, mostly in PHP these days.

If I have any hobbies at all, they would be gardening and music. Musically, I spent my formative years blowing on the small end of French Horns and Mellophones, and had one year of formal piano training way back when, after which I realized I could pick up things by ear much faster. My musical styles are somewhere in the range between George Winston and Mogwai (I’ll let that sink in for a minute…) My musical tastes are even more varied.

That said, though, I do spend a great deal of my spare time coding. It’s not a hobby so much as a love. I contribute to the Drupal project, mostly with my own code as author/maintainer a few modules, but I do on occasion contribute code to the core project and other modules, and one can find me quite sporadically contributing in the forums and support mailing lists.

Currently, I live in a 1907 farmhouse in the valley of New Creek, WV. I’ve been married to my wife, Jeanette, since 1992. We have three children, all boys, Anthony (1994), Timothy (1996), and Nicholas (2000). When I’m not having fun hanging around my immediate family, I’m having fun hanging around my parents and siblings, of which I am the oldest of five. They mostly still live close by, though a couple are still in college at WVU in Morgantown, and my brother Greg also works there as an academic advisor. My dad retired from teaching following the 2004-05 school year, and my mother teaches in the Mineral County public school system still.

I used to follow politics, and some of you are probably getting to the One Inch Frame thinking you’re going to Perpetually Disgruntled, my old (mostly) political blog that was at the same URL. In the weeks preceeding the U. S. “General Election” of 2004 something in my brain exploded, and I left politics behind, and have not looked back. I remain, though, just as much confused and disgusted with the political Left as well as the Right. I suppose I am left of center on most issues.

About One Inch Frame

eafarris — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 14:48:21 -0400

The One Inch Frame is the personal website of eric Farris. It is both a blog and used as a sort of “out board brain,” documenting the things that I find interesting or things that are part of my professional life as a systems administrator.

The name “One Inch Frame” is taken from the writings of Anne Lamott, specifically her book Bird by Bird. The concept is that large projects can be best completed by breaking them down into smaller, managable pieces. The actual term comes from being able to describe an elaborate scene while writing by tackling the part contained within a one-inch picture frame, then moving the frame. No need to describe the entire dinner party; just the lovely texture of the paté, then move on to what the hostess is wearing, then on to the man our heroine meets for the very first time. As the title of the book suggests, these big things are best completed as a series of little things, taking them “bird by bird.”

This manner of thinking is mostly common sense but is making a comeback as the “Getting Things Done” movement, based on the David Allen book of the same name, is rising to prominence, particularly in the geek/web world.

This One Inch Frame is run on Drupal, my favorite web-based content management system, an Open Source project to which I occasionally contribute code. The theme used here is my own design, and still under development. I may release it back to the drupal.org CVS repository when it has stabilized.

In addition to the usual blog stuff, this site has a large series of posts and links interwoven into the “One Inch Frames,” which document those things that interest me. I don’t really have a good navigational aid to get into that content at the moment, but ten of these nodes are chosen at random and presented in the block to the right entitled “Random Wiki Nodes.” I am working on integrating the large link repository into the wiki nodes.

privoxy

eafarris — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:01:11 -0400

A non-caching proxy filter for the web. Privoxy is typically run on the localhost and alters the HTML between the server and the browser. It has many built-in actions for blocking ads, removing cookies, altering referrer headers, and the like. Privoxy can be highly customized, including writing arbitrary regular expressions for manipulating content. I run it everywhere, including on my Nokia N810.

Tips

The regular expression I use to filter out advertisements in Facebook’s friend feed (and a general method for adding user styles):
s@<head>@<head><style type="text/css">.social_ad{display:none !important}</style>@

Address Book

eafarris — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 17:53:46 -0400

[inline:addressbook.jpg]

The built-in app for managing contacts in Mac OS X.

Windows PowerPro

eafarris — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 20:14:11 -0400

Windows PowerPro is a kind of swiss army knife for Microsoft Windows. I’ve been using it since way back when, before it was free, when it was called Stiletto. It presents bars on the screen that can act as button-based launchers, but can also run commands on keystrokes, mouse chords, time intervals, and other events. The commands it runs can be applications, dialogs, display menus, act on windows, and lots more.

When I was a Windows guy, running it all the time, PowerPro was the first piece of software I installed on a machine I was going to spend any time with.

Windows PowerPro has been released free of charge by Bruce Switzer. I used to communicate a lot with Bruce back in the Stiletto days, and he was very receptive to my bug reports and feature requests. Nice guy, killer app.

Resources

Windows PowerPro home page
Stuff that Powerpro replaces — a running list of tools that duplicate pieces of what’s possible with Powerpro