If you like to automate tedious tasks, check out AutoIt. It was developed as a scripting language not to develop full-blown applications with(although it is quite possible now), but as a utility language to make common tasks easy for people using windows.
I've used it in the past and found that it was quite versatile... It provides functionality to deal with guis, networking, simulated keyboard and mouse input, and other misc. features that will make your life a bit easier..
If a batch script isn't quite cutting it, give AutoIt a shot. You can compile your script into a stand-alone executable so you don't have to worry about installing AutoIt on every computer you need your script run on.
That's all for now, been a busy day.
Home of AutoIt
2010-04-08
2010-04-05
TeX doesn't suck..
Formatting documents to look consistent and structured is one of the things that used to always irritate me. I personally just could not do this with Microsoft Word or any document editor... I realize that it's probably just a lack of artistic ability (and patience) that I could not accomplish this simple task, but I am here to tell you that there is a better way.
Way back in the day(which was a tuesday, in case you were wondering), a man named Donald E. Knuth created the TeX formatting system to help him create a book for the math course he was teaching. TeX is a typesetting language - it allows you to focus on the structure of the document instead of the appearance. As long as you aren't stupid, TeX will produce a very professional looking document every time.
The initial version was called TeX, but these days your best bet is to download a version of LaTeX - which is basically TeX with a bunch of other common files - that way you don't have to worry about downloading them separately. There are some editors specifically intended for LaTeX, however I prefer using Notepad++ with the nppexec plugin.
Another strong benefit of using TeX (especially for documentation or things of that nature...) is the fact that you can check the raw tex files into a source control system and easily tell what has changed between versions of a given file. This isn't very easy to do with other formats(doc,pdf,etc...).
Anyway - That's all for now... I really do recommend giving this a shot. It has made my life a whole lot easier when writing documentation or anything that needs to look professional.
Check out their home page - it has tutorials and mirrors to download LaTex(Called TeX Live just to confuse you some more)
TeX Live
Way back in the day(which was a tuesday, in case you were wondering), a man named Donald E. Knuth created the TeX formatting system to help him create a book for the math course he was teaching. TeX is a typesetting language - it allows you to focus on the structure of the document instead of the appearance. As long as you aren't stupid, TeX will produce a very professional looking document every time.
The initial version was called TeX, but these days your best bet is to download a version of LaTeX - which is basically TeX with a bunch of other common files - that way you don't have to worry about downloading them separately. There are some editors specifically intended for LaTeX, however I prefer using Notepad++ with the nppexec plugin.
Another strong benefit of using TeX (especially for documentation or things of that nature...) is the fact that you can check the raw tex files into a source control system and easily tell what has changed between versions of a given file. This isn't very easy to do with other formats(doc,pdf,etc...).
Anyway - That's all for now... I really do recommend giving this a shot. It has made my life a whole lot easier when writing documentation or anything that needs to look professional.
Check out their home page - it has tutorials and mirrors to download LaTex(Called TeX Live just to confuse you some more)
TeX Live
2010-04-04
PsTools doesn't suck
Ever get all comfortable and situated on your living room couch or recliner with your trusty laptop and suddenly realize that you need to make some changes to your (windows *cough*)desktop computer way on the other end of the house? Chances are that most of us have had this problem, but where others have failed - you will succeed. I will give you the necessary tools to prevent such situations from ruining your laziness. Most of you that have this problem probably have already installed some type of remote access service on your desktop(vnc,rdp,telnet,etc...), but since that would defeat the purpose of me writing this blog, let's assume that in this particular situation you have just formatted your windows box in the other room and forgot to do this...(those of us running OpenBSD or some other *nix variant will use ssh if we have half a brain)
Anyway, long story short - use pstools. PsTools is a suite of applications originally developed by Sysinternals... Microsoft bought them eventually, so It's a microsoft product now I suppose... Even still, it's a very handy set of applications(especially for a network admin). The one that I use most often is psexec, so I will briefly cover some of the things you can pull off with it and leave the other applications in the suite for the reader to discover.
Psexec will allow you to remotely execute an application on another machine(As long as you have an account name and password handy for that box). It will allow you to execute a remote executable or copy an executable from your machine to the remote machine and execute it. You can also use psexec to run commands with the SYSTEM account, which has it's benefits at times.
*DETOUR*
Ever tried used Macrium Reflect to back up a system only to be constantly irritated with the NTFS Permissions from the image when attempting a restore? Launch a cmd shell as the SYSTEM account and you will be able to browse all of the files from your mounted image without troubles
*END DETOUR*
You launch a remote cmd shell from psexec to gain telnet-like access to a box without actually turning telnet on. Let's be honest - once you have a remote cmd shell, you can pretty much make any changes to the system that you would want to do, so I'll stop blogging right here.
*SIDE NOTE* - If you're running *nix, there is an application called winexe that will supposedly let you execute commands on a windows box remotely just like psexec. I have not tried this application yet, but it sounds promising.
Home of winexe
Go Download it and try it out
Home of PsTools
Anyway, long story short - use pstools. PsTools is a suite of applications originally developed by Sysinternals... Microsoft bought them eventually, so It's a microsoft product now I suppose... Even still, it's a very handy set of applications(especially for a network admin). The one that I use most often is psexec, so I will briefly cover some of the things you can pull off with it and leave the other applications in the suite for the reader to discover.
Psexec will allow you to remotely execute an application on another machine(As long as you have an account name and password handy for that box). It will allow you to execute a remote executable or copy an executable from your machine to the remote machine and execute it. You can also use psexec to run commands with the SYSTEM account, which has it's benefits at times.
*DETOUR*
Ever tried used Macrium Reflect to back up a system only to be constantly irritated with the NTFS Permissions from the image when attempting a restore? Launch a cmd shell as the SYSTEM account and you will be able to browse all of the files from your mounted image without troubles
*END DETOUR*
You launch a remote cmd shell from psexec to gain telnet-like access to a box without actually turning telnet on. Let's be honest - once you have a remote cmd shell, you can pretty much make any changes to the system that you would want to do, so I'll stop blogging right here.
*SIDE NOTE* - If you're running *nix, there is an application called winexe that will supposedly let you execute commands on a windows box remotely just like psexec. I have not tried this application yet, but it sounds promising.
Home of winexe
Go Download it and try it out
Home of PsTools
2010-04-03
Project64 Doesn't suck
Do you remember the good days when graphics weren't more important than game play? Do you miss the games you used to play on your Nintendo 64 like Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart, and Conker's Bad Fur Day? If so, I've got some excellent news for you...
Project64 is a Nintendo 64 emulator - it will allow you to play all of your old Nintendo 64 games on your computer. I will try to never explain in detail something that should be blatantly obvious to anyone who uses a computer on a regular basis, therefor I will not be explaining *how* to use an emulator. Anyone with a brain should be able to google this and prevent me from cluttering the Internet with another "How to do some mindless task for idiots" guide. You will find that I will only cover in detail things that are actually worth covering in detail. Anyway, back to the topic at hand...
I have enjoyed several old Nintendo 64 games thanks to Project64. My wife even purchased a couple of actual Nintendo 64 controllers off of Ebay along with an Adapter so they can hook up to your pc. Using the actual N64 controllers definitely makes the games more enjoyable and I highly recommend using them if you can afford it. If not, you can of course use your keyboard(if playing multi-player games, I prefer hooking up an additional keyboard).
An additional plus to Project64 is that it runs just fine through wine if you are running a variant of *nix.
That's all for now, go download Project64 and give it a shot.
Home of Project64
Project64 is a Nintendo 64 emulator - it will allow you to play all of your old Nintendo 64 games on your computer. I will try to never explain in detail something that should be blatantly obvious to anyone who uses a computer on a regular basis, therefor I will not be explaining *how* to use an emulator. Anyone with a brain should be able to google this and prevent me from cluttering the Internet with another "How to do some mindless task for idiots" guide. You will find that I will only cover in detail things that are actually worth covering in detail. Anyway, back to the topic at hand...
I have enjoyed several old Nintendo 64 games thanks to Project64. My wife even purchased a couple of actual Nintendo 64 controllers off of Ebay along with an Adapter so they can hook up to your pc. Using the actual N64 controllers definitely makes the games more enjoyable and I highly recommend using them if you can afford it. If not, you can of course use your keyboard(if playing multi-player games, I prefer hooking up an additional keyboard).
An additional plus to Project64 is that it runs just fine through wine if you are running a variant of *nix.
That's all for now, go download Project64 and give it a shot.
Home of Project64
2010-04-02
Notepad++ doesn't suck
If you have ever gotten fed up with text editors that don't offer enough functionality to make them useful in every-day situations or if you have ever been irritated with text editors that have too much overhead and take too long to load, you will be pleasantly surprised if you try Notepad++.
Notepad++ is a free open-source text editor that has been my primary editor when I am using a windows operating system for about the past year. I have found that it has been surprisingly versatile and has definitely saved me hours if not days of work simply by not sucking. The only feature that I can think of off the top of my head that could make this application any better is if it had all of the key-bindings from vi.
Even though it doesn't have the same key-bindings as vi, it does provide a lot of the functionality that you may be missing from other editors. Macros are one of my favorite features in the application and allow you to repeat a set of key-strokes automatically as many times as you wish - I will devote an entire blog to this feature at some point in the future because it's just that awesome. Other features that I frequently use are Regular Expression matching/replacing throughout documents, find/replace within files(On the filesystem - they don't even have to be open!), the nppexec plugin, and of course the xml plugins are noteworthy.
Syntax highlighting is very good for many languages and it also offers basic auto-complete features(although this feature is most definitely not as powerful as intellisense if you're used to that - so don't get your hopes up there.)
As I said above, I use this editor as my primary editor. That may not seem like much to say for some people, but any programmer(ok, any programmer that doesn't suck) knows that almost all of their time will be spent in their text editor. I frequently use this editor for classic asp, c#, vb .net, SQL, x86 asm, php, html, javascript, css, and other misc file types that I deal with.
Go download this application and give it a shot - you will thank me later...
Home of Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free open-source text editor that has been my primary editor when I am using a windows operating system for about the past year. I have found that it has been surprisingly versatile and has definitely saved me hours if not days of work simply by not sucking. The only feature that I can think of off the top of my head that could make this application any better is if it had all of the key-bindings from vi.
Even though it doesn't have the same key-bindings as vi, it does provide a lot of the functionality that you may be missing from other editors. Macros are one of my favorite features in the application and allow you to repeat a set of key-strokes automatically as many times as you wish - I will devote an entire blog to this feature at some point in the future because it's just that awesome. Other features that I frequently use are Regular Expression matching/replacing throughout documents, find/replace within files(On the filesystem - they don't even have to be open!), the nppexec plugin, and of course the xml plugins are noteworthy.
Syntax highlighting is very good for many languages and it also offers basic auto-complete features(although this feature is most definitely not as powerful as intellisense if you're used to that - so don't get your hopes up there.)
As I said above, I use this editor as my primary editor. That may not seem like much to say for some people, but any programmer(ok, any programmer that doesn't suck) knows that almost all of their time will be spent in their text editor. I frequently use this editor for classic asp, c#, vb .net, SQL, x86 asm, php, html, javascript, css, and other misc file types that I deal with.
Go download this application and give it a shot - you will thank me later...
Home of Notepad++
First blog
Keeping this short and sweet as it's from my blackberry - just
verifying that this will work.
verifying that this will work.
--
Sent from my mobile device
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