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• Notes (weeks 33-35) - Break
• Notes (week 32) - SVN Snapshot
• Notes (week 31) - Ubuntu in use
• Notes (week 30) - 0.90 RC 3
• Notes (week 29) - SVN Snapshot
• Notes (week 28) - 0.90 RC 2
• Notes (week 26-27) - Vacation
• Notes (week 25) - Happy Midsummer!
• Notes (week 24) - New Office
• Notes (week 23) - Back to work

This week I’ve been cleaning CE’s source from all the old settings stuff. Next task is to make everything work with the new settings engine. It’s quite a mess so we’ll have to see if it works. I’ve also been doing backups of all my files. I ordered new hard drive yesterday so next week I’ll be moving to new home (yay!).

About FeedDemon, I’m not going to use it. It’s a nice program but it didn’t “feel” right. It felt kind of awkward to use, probably because I’m so used to NewsFox. However, yesterday I found Snarfer which feels more like home. Snarfer is a freeware but there is Pageflakes tab that can’t be closed. It remains to be seen whether I’m going to switch back to NewsFox or not.

Snarfer
http://www.snarfware.com/

Until now, I’ve used FireFox addon called NewsFox. It’s been working fine but I would like to have a separate reader program. Today I noticed that FeedDemon is no longer shareware but freeware. I installed it and it seems to be quite powerful RSS reader, so I’m going to use it from now on. If you are looking for a desktop RSS reader, I highly suggest trying this one. It handles enclosures pretty well so it’s good for podcasts also.

FeedDemon
http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx

NewsFox - FireFox addon
http://newsfox.mozdev.org/

It’s been busy week. I spent pretty much the whole week hacking SMF (forum) and Flyspray (bug tracker). The goal was to make those two software somehow work together. After some hard studying I was able to write a mod to SMF. The mod adds new section to the forum called My Reports.

I think that the forum is the most pleasant way of reporting bugs. Only problem is that those reports should somehow find their way to a tracking system, otherwise they get forgotten fast. So I created a function that works similarly as the quote works when you write reply posts. Basically I can now mark post as a bug/todo item and move it into the tracking system with a single click .
The user can see all his/her reports in My Reports section.

The system is up and running now but there might be some bugs left so if you see any, let me know.

I opened the todo/bug tracker…finally! I decided to use Flyspray for tracking items. The original plan was to write my own software to do that but at the moment I just don’t have time to do it. I checked what the flyspray guys had made since the last time I used it and there was some cool improvements so I thought to go with it.

The tracker is read only at the moment and there aren’t many items yet. I’m still working with it so there might be some weird things happening but if you feel like it, check it out.

Flyspray
http://flyspray.org/

After I installed the Windows Live Writer beta 3, I noticed that the spell checker didn’t work anymore. The reason was the fact that WLW was localized to Finland. However I only write English text so I’ll need the English dictionary. Hopefully the WLW team will let users to choose the spell check language directly from the WLW in the future.

Currently you can fix this issue by changing the loc file. That file seems to only have a ISO 639-1 language code (codes here). By changing the code to en, WLW enables the spell checker.

Default loc file path is:
C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\loc

I’ve used the Lightning addon for Thunderbird as my calendar for a year or so. Today I was browsing Lifehacker and found out that you can use the Google Calendar from Thunderbird. Lightning supports iCal which is also offered from Google Calendar, so it’s possible to import calendars to Thunderbird. However, it’s read only. If you create/edit events in Thunderbird, they won’t show in Google Calendar.
Fortunately there is a way to get around this limitation. There’s a Thunderbird addon that will let you to handle the calendar in both ways.

I’m thinking that I’ll replace the current forum calendar with a Google Calendar. It’s a lot more user friendly and more feature rich.

Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

Lightning
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

Provider for Google Calendar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631

  I’m here listening to Daily GizWiz episodes and thought to test the new version of Windows Live Writer. The newest build is Beta 3, released 5.9.07. It’s much more stable than Beta 2 and also the installation process went a lot smoother this time. There’s few new features and it work’s now in 28 different languages.
WLW is the one and only Microsoft application that I really like. The usability factor is really good. If you are a blogger I highly suggest to try this app.

Windows Live Writer
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

  Another new version I’m using is FileZilla 3.0 I’ve used the 2.x version for a long time and just last week noticed that 3.0 version is out. FileZilla is a FTP client and as far as I know, it’s the best freeware client. The 3.0 version now support drag’n'drop to other programs like CubicExplorer. That’s the one feature I was missing in the older version. Now there’s only one minor feature I’m missing. It’s an option to copy the http address of a file to clipboard.

FileZilla
http://filezilla-project.org/

I’m currently designing a database (MySQL) for the new version/bug/task tracking system. For that task I’m using DBDesigner 4. It’s a free open source application designed to visually build databases. And it’s written in Delphi . To bad I don’t have Delphi 7 installed, otherwise I could have fixed few "design flaws" in it. I’ve used it for few days and have had no problems with it, except for a small annoyance in the table editor.

DBDesigner is now part of the official MySQL tools and it goes by the name of MySQL Workbench. I haven’t yet tested it so can’t say how it works. It still seems to be in Alpha stage (???).

Anyway, here’s how my database look at the moment:

Secure Login is a FireFox extension that adds similar functionality as Opera’s Wand has. Basically by clicking on the "key button" (or using keyboard shortcut), Secure Login fills the login fields with the saved password data and logs you in. There were some news last week about a "hole" in FireFox that let’s malicious sites to steal saved passwords (read more here). Secure Login "fixes" that issue by not filling the login field until the user tells it to do so.

Secure Login
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4429

found via Lifehacker

I finally took version control system in use for CubicExplorer. I chose SVN. Currently I’m using local repository but will move it to a server once I have the time and energy to build a new case for the hardware. I’ve been using this thing for a week now and it’s really nice. Currently CE has over 100 files in it’s source so it started to be a bit hard to handle. The biggest thing I like it is the log. Now I can write note on every bug fix or other change, which means there will be change logs for releases

I used to use a simple folder tree to handle different versions. Every once in a while I took copy of CE’s source folder and started to work in that new folder. I also had all the files in one folder so it was quite a mess. I decided to change the folder structure a bit so that source files and .dcu files are in their own sub-folders. It’s much cleaner now.

I’m using TortoiseSVN to do everything. It supports local repositories so there’s no need to use svnserve or Apache. Also I’m using a simple add-in for Delphi that adds menu with common TortoiseSVN commands.

TortoiseSVN
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Delphi add-in for TortoiseSVN
http://delphiaddinfortortoisesvn.tigris.org/