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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

Well, I’m stuck with the CE development. I’ve been suffering from a writers block about 2 weeks. It’s probably caused by the 16 hour work days that I’ve done 7 days a week for few months now. I’m going to lessen the work load and add more structure in the days. Also I’ll try to not work on weekends. Hopefully those actions will bring us back to the track.

Anyway, I’m now starting a side project that will also be part of CubicExplorer. It’s called CubicViewer and it’s main function is to display files, mainly images and video. It will replace the QuickView in CE but also it will be available as a separate application. Working with this new project should give me some distance on CE and hopefully will help in breaking the block.

Well I finally updated this site. I’m fairly happy with the graphics. The original plan was to have the sidebar menu visible also in the forum (that’s why I made this site wider), however it was too confusing for the eyes so I ended up hiding it. I’ll have to play around some more with the forum layout but for now it’s going to stay like it is, only some polishing will be done.

I updated the forum (SMF) to version 1.1.4 and switched the main site engine from Drupal to WordPress. I only need a simple engine that can handle blog posts and pages, WordPress does that very nicely. The biggest reason why I switched to WP was it’s ease of use. It’s very easy and comfortable to create new themes and plug-ins to it. Also WP is supported by Windows Live Writer which makes updating the content a lot easier.

If you have any thoughts or ideas for this site, let me know

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/

Well, the site update is still not done. I wasn’t happy with the graphics I had done so it’s back to the drawing board. I was on a vacation pretty much the whole August. In this month I’ll be doing some fundamental changes to my life. Those changes will hopefully have a positive effect on the development speed of CE and other planned projects.

Anyway, the goal of this fall is to have CE at version 0.90. That version should have multi-language support and options dialog. After that it’s time to prepare for version 1.0 with plug-in support and such

Currently I’m working with 0.81 beta 1. I decided to add the built-in translation editor into the version 0.81.

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:

Well, it’s that time of the year again. For those who don’t know, ASSEMBLY is a computer festival, a demo party and a LAN party all rolled into one. It is four day party running 24h/day for computer hobbyists. Almost 5000 like minded people around the world come together here in Helsinki Finland. I never have been in ASSEMBLY myself but I’ve watched AssemblyTV from web many years. For me it’s a time to lay back, have few beers and do some fun coding.

If you are interested, you can watch AssemblyTV 24/7 (2.8 - 5.8.07). Read more here:
http://assemblytv.net/2007/stream-en

Here’s more info about ASSEBLY:
http://www.assembly.org/

Just some notes on what’s going on. I’m going to update this site pretty soon, maybe on this weekend. I decided to use WordPress as the engine because it’s really easy and pleasurable to customize and hack, at least compared to Drupal. This time the theme will be a bit darker and more wider. It’s about 900 pixels width which might be a problem for some. I’m thinking of adding an option to switch it into a narrower mode though.

Progress notes are going to move from the forum to the main site, maybe into the blog. I’m still not quite sure how everything will going to be but it should be better than the current solution. Also the todo list is going to change. I’m currently writing a project management program that will take over the todo list. The new solution will integrate into the forum so it’s easier for me to add new todo items, and also it gives us the opportunity to create personal progress pages. That way one could easily keep track and monitor the issues he/she reported.

Anyway, I’m having few week break of CE and then start to do plans for the next move.

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