Adventures in home working

I find that I am increasingly wanting to save and view flash files.  Maxthon has a plug-in for this but its not that great and when my eldest daughter came to me last night and said she wanted to save a great flash animation of hurricane damage I really struggled to get a copy of it for her.

In the end I recorded it as a video using Camtasia Studio and saved that video as flash - talk about overkill, especially as I had to figure out how to make Camtasia v3 work with Vista, which it partially (but frustratingly) does.

The end result worked pretty well, but the resulting flash file ran slower than the original and didn’t have any sound. So tonight I decided there must be a better way - and there certainly is.

The BrowserTools web site has an excellent set of utilities, one of them lets you right click on the html content of a web site that contains flash content and download it, if this doesn’t work - for example nested flash - then you can quickly go hunt through the cash with its cache browser (easier than it sounds because the cache browser is pretty clever and provides previews, filters etc).  Finally when you get your flash content you can display it directly with the flash viewer.  Altogether really excellent.

Web site link

Flash saving plugin link (includes the viewer and cache browser)

Both seem to work in Vista with Maxthon and Firefox.  With IE you get a toolbar as well.

As an aside; the Vista programmes search is great, press the Windows key and type flash and it will return all of the programmes relating to flash - that assumes they have flash in their filenames!  In this case they are named FLV…,  so I dropped a few shortcuts into my startmenu that I renamed to have flash in the name.  That way I stand a chance of finding these utilities again.

In this post a few weeks ago I described how I liked the FeedDemon keyboard reading experience, however there are a few things I would like to see improved, which I realise are very picky!

1. The default key definitions seem too difficult for me,  I want to be able to do everything with single key presses and I need them to be memorable.  For example N for next unread item, P for previous item, L for open Link in new external window.  This is a low priority as they are easy to redefine, however for others it would be easier to adopt the keyboard reading style if the defaults were easier.
2. The keyboard dialog (Ctrl-K), has a bug,  if you try to redefine a key that has a modifier for example change a function that is already define as CTRL-L to P,  you first need to remove the key assignment (set it to blank) then close the dialog and then go and define the new key.  If you don’t do this and just remove CTRL-L then when you try to define P what actually gets defined is CTRL-P.
3. The folder tree highlight is too faint, if I click on the tree the selected folder is really clear but once I have focus on the feed items the tree highlight is really faint, this causes a problem because one you drive FeedDemon using the keyboard you switch from folder to folder without ever clicking on the tree.  FeedDemon does keep the tree in sync with the feed that you are reading, it’s just too faint to see.  This bugs me because while I am reading feed items I like to have the extra context of the feed that the item belongs to.
4. The unread count doesn’t change, as I read items I like to see the unread count change - I just like to know where I am Update: I just realised that this was because I was not marking posts read (how embarrassing!).
5. The focus needs to switch back to feed items, if I press L to open a link in a new window, it works fine - a new tab opens up in my minimized Maxthon browser window.  However focus does not return to the FeedDemon item, I have to click with the mouse to do that.  Switching from the keyboard to the mouse is slow and complex.
6. Some consistent way to go back, while I am reading I often get ahead of myself and want to go back to a previous feed item.  If I define P to be “back” this takes me to the previous item I have viewed, even if it’s now marked as read - which is great but the folder tree is not synchronised to the item I am now reading.  If I define P to be previous unread news item - then the folder tree is in sync, but I need to leave items I read un-read for this to work.  What I want is for each item I read to be marked read, and for Back to go back to the previous items I have just read (but not to the previous unread item in the folder) and when I go back I want the folder tree to keep in sync so that I know where I am. 

   My ideal experience would be the behaviour of “previous unread news item” but instead of unread items it would work its way back through the history of items that I had just read.

Tags: feeddemon feed reading newsgator

Before my upgrade to Vista I had been pretty impressed by Windows Update and I was impressed by the install experience of Vista, all my drivers seemed to be on the DVD or seamlessly downloaded. 

However last night I checked on the HP web site and was pleased to see Windows Vista drivers listed but then pretty surprised to see that none of the latest drivers had been downloaded via Windows Update.  Updates were available for:

1. Disk controller
2. BIOS
3. Audio
4. Graphics
5. Network
6. Diagnostics

So I looked around for an auto updater (I previously always used ibm Thinkpads and I was used to an automatic updater for all my drivers) but the best HP seem to offer is an email subscription or RSS feed.

Bottom line - don’t rely on Windows Update!

I am a bit nervous about VMware on Vista right now and concerned about the upgrade costs to move from 5.5 to 6.  So for now I am leaving VMware on my servers.  For my clients I have installed Virtual PC 2007 and have been pleasently surprised by the following:

1. I like the UI, its clean and simple.  The menus are unobtrusive and provide all the key functions
2. I like the fact that when I resize the window, the video driver changes resolution automatically
3. I really like the fact that it now supports - VMware like - virtual folders, these are important to me because they allow me to establish a VPN session from the Virtual PC and still access my local hard drives (without a split tunnel)
4. I like the fact that I can drag and drop files from my host PC into the Virtual PC
5. performance seems pretty good, I haven’t done any benchmarking but its certainly fast enough for casual use and testing

None of these things differentiates Virtual PC from VMware, but they are enough to make Virtual PC good enough, so I can’t see me upgrading to VMware 6 with any urgency - at least right now - and I definitely think that for most people who need a it Virtual PC will meet all of their needs.

The download is here

The Tech overview is here (XPS)

Carlisle was a surprisingly fun place to visit.  Debbie and the elder girls had been there last year and stayed in university diggs for a couple of days, so I too the twins to the best of the places that they recommened.  We spent most of our time at Tullie House and Museum and had a lot of fun.  Then we went around the Castle which is expensive and not really worth the money - but hey its a holiday - then we went to the much more impressive park. 

This is Tessa posing on the cannon at Carlisle castle with Anna ready to climb on as well.  The views from the castle wall are pretty good, its from there that we spotted the park.

The park has a nice walk by the river but the kids play area of the park is one of the best free parks we have seen and the girls played there for nearly an hour.  In the summar I bet its even better as it has an interactive wet play area, perfect for hot sunny days.   The girls liked the lay down swing best.

We arrived at one of the forts at about 16:30 so didn’t have much light left.  There is not much of the original wall left but the area we were going to see was about 30 minutes walk from the car park. 

We had a really great trek up to it and it was pretty amazing to imagine the logistics of constructing it in such wild lands.  The ambition of those in charge is truly incredible, its hard to imagine anyone nowadays even considering such a difficult undertaking.  Today its probably the equivalent of the sea defenses that have been recently constructed in Holland and probably need to be constructed around the coast of Britain within the next 50 years.

The scale of the wall is difficult to imagine, in this pic two of my kids are dwarfed by it and it was much taller when originally constructed.  I guess most of the stones have been raided by locals to build dry stone walls and houses.

The grass at the top of the hill was really incredible, cropped very short with bolders all over and very spongy. 

Even those of us with Arthritis couldn’t resist running around on it.   However those of us who slipped over soon discovered that not only was it spongy, but it was also holding a lot of water as Debbie and Jenny found out.  We would have loved to walk a lot more as it was a really nice crisp night, but it was getting pretty dark by the time we got back to the car and headed back to Carlisle for the night.

We have spent the last few days in the Lake District, we started off in Kendal, then went up to Carlisle for a couple of days and then back down to Arnside which is one of our favorite walking areas.

I only took the Treo 650 so the photo’s are not that impressive, but at least I have something to remind me.  I find that I rarely take any other camera with me so next time I upgrade my phone the quality of the camera will be an important consideration.

The twins and I had a really good time on the pulley in a park in Kendal, warming up before we hiked up to the castle on the hill

We are all big fans of pulleys, I used to have a big pulley system in my back garden as a kid.  Dad used to work for a Crane manufacturer and so he had plenty of access to scrap cables and pulleys.  This first pic is of Tessa having fun, I used to have a pic of Anna as well but she thought she looked too ugly so I had to delete it :-).

We really enjoyed the walk up to the Castle but Anna typically slipped and ended up covered in mud.  The Castle is a ruin, but its still great for running around and exploring and its free of charge which makes a nice change.

There are really good views of Kendal from the tower but we still couldn’t see Debbie and the elder two kids who were down in Kendal shopping for walking boots.

This is a view of Kendal - well worth the steep climb.

We had a great lunch at a friendly cafe and then jumped back in the car and headed up North to Hadrian’s wall.  I had never seen it before so I was pretty impressed.

I have been using Vista for a while on my Tablet and Laptop, but my main desktop has remained on Windows 2003 server. 

Fortunately a kindly partner agreed to buy me a new desktop for some development work I am doing with them so I decided to get a machine that’s suitable for Vista.  last friday my HP XW4400 arrived with a NVIDIA Quadro 4 head graphics card, 4GB of memory and a couple of 250GB drives.  Although none of the components is leading edge it really runs Vista very well.

Here are a few of the things hat have immediatly impressed me:

1. The install experience was superb, I had no problems with any drivers, everything was either on the DVD or downloaded straight from Windows Update including my HP D125 print/scan/copier.  The machine has been running for a week without any stability issues at all.
2. Multiple monitors is working well with great window image integrity no breakup issues, and very smooth animation and full window content motion
3. The aero effects are not too distracting, and might actually be useful
4. The integrated search is superb.  I have changed the default to do filename/property only search across both disks. which is now lightning fast.  I fo und the file content search returned too many hits too be useful and of course it was slower.  I don’t really find full file content search to be that useful in general they all return too many hits and never the right ones.  I have tried Yahoo, Google, X1 and MSN desktop search.
5. I love the new explorer, the bread crumbs, sort, filter grouping is great and I like the fact that I can type straight into the search box, because I have file name only search on and its instant I can trim the folder down to a handful of files in no time
6. Once you get the hang of the advanced search syntax it’s very powerful
7. I really like the way I can press the windows key and just start typing no matter what window I am in.  And I can use the Windows Key and the instant search field to launch Active Words!
8. I am finding sidebar useful.  It’s displayed on my left monitor and shows a clock, calendar, pictures of the family, a performance counter (memory and both core of the CPU), and 3 application launchers (all the same one but launched 3 times by renaming the file).  I might drop the launchers soon because launching with the windows key is faster than the mouse most of the time.
9. Application compatibility is pretty good, much better than 2003 server.  However Ultramon is not perfect, but it’s still useful and a beta with Vista support is expected soon.

I have a lot of testing and playing still to do - I have been away on holiday all week - but its looking good so far.  I think I am going to enjoy the next few weeks!