Murmur of echoes, about movies, software, not xhtml and maybe flowers
This year I will be presenting at Øredev, the best conference in Europe.
I will be talking about MbUnit, my favorite testing framework, on wednesday after lunch.
The conference lasts the entire week 2-6 November.
While on the subject of Start Menu replacement, I’d like to mention another tool called Engage.
It’s also a Start Menu replacement, but it managed to disable my logitech mouse and keyboard… After a while, I don’t know how long, I always experienced this after unlocking the computer, the keyboard didn’t produce any letters. After failing to use the keyboard I tried to use the mouse instead, but I couldn’t double click on anything anymore.
Really strange, happened several time, and the problem disappeared when I installed it.
I don’t know why, but I regularly try different tools that promises a more efficient Start Menu in Windows XP:
I’ve installed SmartStartMenu a number of time on several computer and liked it, It’s not really a Start Menu replacement but it basically does the same thing as the replacements do: lets you search the entries in the start menu instead of browse, thereby saving time.
Then read about Vista Start Menu somewhere and thought it looked good. Maybe I was influenced by all the hype about the Start Menu in Vista. Everybody is talking about how great it is to be able to search the start menu (and how bad it is with all the shut down options). So I installed it had in my machine for a while.
Then I uninstalled it. And I have gotten rid of SmartStartMenu as well.
Turns out that I don’t use them, I took a long time to figure out. It seems that I don’t need any of them. I’ve always had a pretty long list of ‘most used programs’ in my regular start menu, and that seems to be enough. I also have one or two icons on my desktop for some things.
I now think this is a more common situation than I first anticipated, I like tool, to try them out, as well as make my own, but are they really needed? Well, as long as I have fun trying them out, it might not be necessary for them to same time? right?
I previously had some problems with the combination ReSarper and VisualSVN, so I’m happy to report that ReSharper 2.5.2 and VisualSVN 1.2.2 works like a charm together.
I have no idea what the problem was…
In a previous post I was pretty impressed by snap. But after running it for a while, and encountering it on a number of other sites it starts to be annoying, previews pop up all around the place when you move the mouse. I really just want it on some select link, and the links should look good in the preview as well. So until I find out how to do that I have disabled it.
“Less is more”, “Small is the new big”, etc
The new version (0.8.6) of VLC Player works on Windows Vista! Good news indeed, it can now play stuff and still let your windows be transparent. It might have been called a small glitch, but it was very annoying every time the entire screen blinked and told you about the problem. Now its back to just being the best video player. Thanks!
Installed the cool Wordpress plug-in Snap this week, I was quite surprised the first time I encountered in on an a site, and was amazed by the fact that I could have it for free… 
It generates a little preview of the page a link links to when you hover the mouse pointer above it.
Look at it go
Sometimes it takes some time to generate the preview, but ofter it’s really quick.
According to PC World’s list The 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year the most innovative software 2006 was a new version of Microsoft Office. That’s sad. As with a lot of the things on the list it’s a development effort on the previous version. The new features of Office 2007 has not revolutionized my way of working. Some features are good, like the real-time preview of layout changes, but that’s hardly the most innovative thing of 2006. I’m not sure about the new ribbon thing either, sure they look good, and some features are easy to find, but I think it’s harder too look for thing that I don’t know where they are, like the about box.
The Wii however looks like great fun, and changes the way Video Games are experienced.
Is YouOS really a good idea, considering the criticism Google’s or Microsoft’s online services get when there is a bug or they have some downtime. What when the entire OS is down And what about criticism like this. I’ll admit that it’s a bit of innovation though.
And what about number 10, a Windows mobile phone, I have yet to see a good Microsoft mobile (I have seen them boot extremely slow, consume battery like crazy, crash when ringing and crash during conversation), the stats are hardly impressive either.
I guess I must come up with some replacement innovations… I would vote for (free) fun extensible applications like Firefox 2 that lets people provide some innovations themselves, usually a good idea, if there is a following.
or fun (free) extensible web (Ajax) application that really work like Google start page, that also lets you do what you want.
Set the user free!
I really like ReSharper, it the best Visual Studio.NET plug-in ever, and I get really sad when I have to work without it (not to mention the sadness caused by VB.NET, but that’s another story). I also really like SubVersion, and so far I’ve always used TortoiseSVN. So it seems natural that I would want to try out VisualSVN 1.1.1 when I heard about it. Total disaster…
This is what I got after installing VisualSVN (with ReSharper 2.5 already installed), the picture shows the situation after restarting VS.NET twice, both times ReSharper getting upset and reinitializing it’s menu.
The right-most ReSharper menu look as it should, but even after uninstalling VisualSVN it keeps multiplying…
After uninstalling ReSharper, resetting my VS.NET settings, and installing ReSharper again it was beck to normal. TestDriven.NET was installed and unharmed during the entire experience.
I think this was before installing the infamous Visual Studio.NET 2005 Service Pack, a scary experience, especially after reading about it in other blogs. Hmm… why can’t I search in Google Reader so I can find more SP1 posts.
The installation was eventually a success for me, after a long long time…
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