Cubic Reality » Software

Postbox email client and static browser

Marko — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:45:20 +0000

I found (through Lifehacker) a program called Postbox. It’s an email client based on Thunderbird.

Until now I’ve been using Opera as my email client. I have used Thunderbird a lot but had to give it up because it kept asking for email passwords (very annoying!!!) even though I clicked on the remember button. For a while now, I’ve been using Opera as an email client and a “static” browser. By static browser I mean a web browser that lives in system tray and which I can show/hide with one keyboard button (Caps Lock in my case). That browser is used for quick access to sites like Google Reader and other regular sites I visit.

Few weeks ago I switched (due to compatibility issues) to Firefox based “static” browser. Basically I made my own Firefox edition called FirefoxPIM. It lives in system tray (thanks to TrayIt), and shows/hides with one keyboard button (thanks to AutoHotkey). Here’s how it looks:

So, now I’m trying Postbox as my email client instead of Opera. As it’s based on Thunderbird, it most likely has that same bug that made me switch client in the first place. However, it is very nice package and I absolutely love the UI. Also it has very nice indexing/search features. So until if/when that password bug appears and/or when it drives me nuts, I’ll be using this program as my email client.

Postbox
http://www.postbox-inc.com/

Using Windows 7 RC

Marko — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:15:15 +0000

I’m sure most of you have heard about the Windows 7 RC release this week. I’ve heard a lot good things about Windows 7 so I though I’d install it on my laptop. The laptop came with Vista Home Premium which I switched to XP Pro because Vista had too much bugs and issues. At one point I had Ubuntu 8.10 installed but had to give it up because hibernation didn’t work properly.

Now Windows 7 is installed and I’m loving it. It works very well and is nice and slick to use. I’ve had no problems with it so far, except for the fact that Zone Alarm firewall doesn’t work in it (yet). There is also the Virtual XP mode which works nicely. Also I like the new task bar (or Super Bar as it’s called). Only problem is when trying to pin files in it. You need to use shortcuts to make it work properly.

I’m using the 64bit version and installed it from USB drive. Here’s good instructions how to do that. If you do the install from 32bit Windows (like I was), in step 6 you need to use bootsect from 32bit ISO because the 64bit version doesn’t work. If you don’t want to download the 32bit ISO (2.6GB), you can also find the 32bit bootsect.exe from google or you can use other 3rd party tool that do the same thing.

Windows 7 RC is available for anyone interested. The license is working until March 2010. After that Windows will reboot itself every two hours. In June 2010, it will switch into non-genuine mode (black wallpaper and constant nag screens).

Windows 7 RC
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Notes (week 17) – New site is open

Marko — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:42:00 +0000

Well, here it is. After tons of work the new site is starting to be ready. Basically what I’ve done is updated all software to their newest versions and created new graphics. Also there is now Wiki available which all forum members can edit. The graphics are a bit lighter and curvier than previous one. I still need to do some tweaking with font colors and sizes.

Anyway, I’m sure there are still some things not working correctly. If you see any bugs, let me know. I’m going to add some content and do more tweaking this week (it’s week 18 now). Hopefully by the end of the week everything is settled and maybe we even have some kind of roadmap for CE.

Here’s a list of all programs currently in use:

WordPress 2.7.1 (All pages and posts)
SMF 1.1.8 (Forum)
FlySpray 0.9.9.5.1 (Todo list)
PmWiki 2.2.1 (Wiki)

Notice: there is a bug in the forum login/logoff at the moment. On login or logoff it might redirect you in the Wiki page instead back to the forum. I’ll fix it as soon as possible.

Notes (week 10) – SVN Snapshot and office update

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:22:42 +0000

It’s been busy week. I’ve been fine tuning some of the time management techniques and done some preparations and planning for an office update, which is scheduled for this weekend. Basically I’m going to rebuild my office from scratch. Also I’ll reinstall Windows in my work system. Here’s few 3D designs (made with SketchUp and Kerkythea) of the new office layout:

About the new CE snapshot, I added QuickView tab. It works just like text editor tab does but for images and videos. Currently loading larger images can be a bit slow but I’ll optimize that next week. Also I’ll have to add an ability to zoom and scroll images. Controls to show next and previous images would be also nice. Middle click or Alt+Left click over image, video or audio opens the file in QuickView tab.

Change Log

Added main menu popup action.
Added main menu popup in status bar.
Added visibility option for Main Menu.
Added visibility option for tab bar.
Added “Close tabs on left” and “Close tabs on right” actions.
Added QuickView tab page.
Added Korean translation.
Changed shortcuts for panels to Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3…etc.

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1105 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.4MB)

Notes (week 9) – Sleeping

admin — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:03:49 +0000

Nothing special to mention about last week. I was paralyzed by severe fatigue which made me sleep for 12-14 hours per day. So no progress last week. This week (week 10) there should be some progress and also a new snapshot on Friday.

On other notes, I’ve started to learn some new time management skills. It’s an ongoing process for this year. Mainly I’m using todo lists, spreadsheets and programs like ManicTime to track and plan my time usage. That hopefully will boost my productivity and also helps to keep future breakdowns away.

I’ve been using ManicTime for few weeks now and it’s really nice. It’s a freeware application for tracking your computer usage. I highly recommend it if you are interested on where your time goes while using computer.

ManicTime
http://www.manictime.com/

Notes (weeks 49-4) – Open source CE

admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:10:42 +0000

Well, not yet at work. It seems that the recovery is taking longer than I thought. I’ve been updating my working environment and introduced some new things like the project server which is pretty much hosting my entire life thanks to eGroupWare. These changes hopefully will balance the work load and prevent meltdowns in the future. The server is up and running. Reusing materials and parts resulted total cost to be 0€ .

Initially I was planning to host CE’s code in my own server, but after thinking it some more, there’s not really any reason to do so. There are many free hosting options out there so why not let professionals handle those servers. After reviewing different hosts, I ended up choosing Google Code Hosting. They have fast servers/connections and proper backups in many geolocations.

I have uploaded all code to the server and it’s now available. There’s still a lot’s of cleaning to do in the code and folder structures. Also building instructions should be added. I chose Mozilla Public License (MPL) as the license. Anyway, from now on CE’s code will live here:

CubicExplorer on Google Code
http://code.google.com/p/cubicexplorer/

Notes (week 31) – Ubuntu in use

admin — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:53:04 +0000

Another week, another snapshot. I’ve fixed few bugs and added few items in Edit and View menu. Also I changed the tab behavior so that when you close last tab, CE will open the "home" folder. Also when drive or media (CD etc.) is removed, all tabs that were browsing those locations are now closed automatically. I didn’t have time to do much testing with that feature so please let me know how it works.

On other notes, I switched to Ubuntu in my laptop. I did do a dual boot install but haven’t used Windows at all after the switch. Or well, I have used it but it’s been inside Ubuntu with VirtualBox. All in all, I’ve enjoyed every minute of using Ubuntu instead of Windows. Only issue I noticed was the fact that the file manager isn’t very good. However I have a plan to fix that. The plan is called CubicExplorer Lite. It will be a simple cross-platform file manager. Nothing special, just tabs and bookmarks. The plan is that CubicExplorer 2.0 will be cross-platform app, and as it looks like I need to switch to another programming language to make that happen, CubicExplorer Lite will be a perfect learning project.

Anyway, CE Lite is not top priority project at the moment so can’t say when there’s going to be something to show. I’m still choosing the programming language (suggestions are welcome) so it might take a while.

Change Log

Added #204, Auto select first item.
Added "New" and "New Folder" items in Edit menu.
Added "Arrange By" and "Group By" items in View menu.
Updated Chinese Simplified translation.
Changed #211, Now closes unavailable tabs when drive/media is removed.
Changed #212, Now opens "Home" folder when last tab is closed.
Fixed #198, FolderTree shouldn’t show "Network Connections" items.
Fixed #199, EAccessViolation
Fixed #200, EAssertionFailed
Fixed #207, Drive bar doesn’t respect the "Open in new tab by default" option.

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1081 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.0MB)

Switching to Firefox 3

admin — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:02:00 +0000

So, I switched to Firefox 3 RC 1. From the tests I’ve done it seems stable enough. In fact, it’s more stable than Firefox 2 which keeps crashing quite often. There were few add-ons that didn’t work right out of the box. Some did have a working development version available, others needed manual tweaking.

Open Firefox add-on (.xpi file) in 7-zip (or similar).
Select install.rdf file.
Press F4 or click File–>Edit
Change the value in em:maxVersion to 3.0.
Save and Close.
Click OK to update the XPI file. Close 7-zip.
Double click to install the add-on.
Hope that everything works fine.

Obviously this doesn’t work for all add-ons since only the maximum Firefox version number is changed. But if there isn’t a working version available, it’s worth a try.

“SVN is the most pointless project ever started”

admin — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:45:00 +0000

I just watched this interesting video. Linus Torvalds talks about Git. I’ve heard about Git before but never used it nor read about it in detail. Git is a version control system like CVS and SVN. Although I guess I shouldn’t mention those two in same sentence as Git since Linus hates CVS with a passion. Currently I’m using SVN to handle versions and I’ve been happy with it so far. But Git did sound interesting so I’ll have to try it out.

Git – Fast Version Control System
http://git.or.cz/

Switching to Linux based HTPC

admin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:47:00 +0000

What would I do without my HTPC. I have had a computer hooked to my TV for the past 10 years. At first, I mainly used it as a DVD player. Now it’s the only source of video. Last year the analog TV signal stopped here in Finland. Ever since then, the HTPC has been the only way I can watch TV since I don’t have a set-top box nor a TV that can receive digital signal. Because I’m really addicted to TV, starting a project like this wasn’t something I was looking forward as it meant I couldn’t get my daily dosage.

Anyway, last weekend I made the decision to try Linux as a base for HTPC. I’m not that experienced with Linux so there was lot to learn. At the moment I’m using Ubuntu but might switch to Debian later. First thing I did was to install SSH server and Synergy. That way I could use my work system to work with Linux.

I have Hauppauge HRV-1100 DVB-T card and it worked right out of the box in Ubuntu (7.10). My motherboard has Nvidia’s SoundStorm in it which I got to work by following these instructions. I tried MythTV at first but quickly moved to VDR. I think it’s really the only choice if you are looking for a serious DVR solution. It handles transponders properly which means one can watch and record many channels (from a transponder) at the same time with one card. Setting VDR up can be little tricky but once you get to know with it, it’s pretty simple. At first I was using packages from e-tobi by following these directions. But since I had some troubles with few plugins, I now compile everything myself.

All was looking good and things were moving along nicely… until!

After days of tweaking I was getting nice and solid picture. However, there was some still unknown issue that made VDR (vdr-sxfe to be precise) respond slowly when used in TV. In monitor it worked fine. I tried pretty much all different combination of settings to make it work. No luck. I also tried different graphics cards which ended in disaster. Being stupid and careless I didn’t shutdown the power supply when I removed one card. I’ve never had any problems when doing so but this time I had to turn the card in an angle which short circuited few pins and that fried the motherboard.

So, now I’m waiting for a replacement motherboard. In the meanwhile I’m using an old board with Duron 800MHz processor. On a brighter note, this gave me the opportunity to clean the case. It was filled with dust and cat hair.

CatchColor

admin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:54:00 +0000

Here’s a nice little app that let’s you pick color from the screen. It’s very useful when creating web pages. The author also has other nice little apps.

CatchColor
http://www.dr-hoiby.com/CatchColor/index.php

No more Vista!

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:51:00 +0000

About month ago I bought a new laptop, Acer 5520. It came with Vista Home Premium and I’ve been using it until last weekend I finally had enough. All and all the Vista experience was negative. I had lot’s of issues with the wireless connection and usually after resuming from hibernation, Vista was not able to find web site addresses anymore (tweaked a lot with DNS settings but there was no fix). The most serious issues had to do with power management. Sometimes the laptop wouldn’t shutdown when powering off or hibernating, only choice was to cut the power by force. Putting the laptop to sleep ended in blue screen of death.

There really wasn’t any reason I could think of why I should use Vista instead of XP. Only difference (in my needs) is that Vista looks “better”. Other than that there isn’t anything new, just more heavier OS. So now I’m using XP and everything works like a charm. I am however tempted to try Linux and after I read an interesting article from lifehacker, I might just do that.

Windows XP drivers for Acer 5520
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/AcerDrivers/Aspire%205520.pdf

Run Windows apps seamlessly inside linux
http://lifehacker.com/367714/run-windows-apps-seamlessly-inside-linux

Notes (week 2) and Snarfer

admin — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:25:14 +0000

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/

FeedDemon is now free

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:23:44 +0000

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/

Notes (week 49)

admin — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 10:24:42 +0000

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.

Todo/bug tracker is opened

admin — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:18:37 +0000

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/

WLW beta 3 and spell checking

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:39:18 +0000

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 FilesWindows LiveWriterloc

Thunderbird, calendar and google.

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:04:49 +0000

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

New versions (WLW and FileZilla)

admin — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 04:21:14 +0000

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/

DBDesigner 4

admin — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:00:16 +0000

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: