mark.bockenstedt.net » Software

TweetDeck Continually Improves the Twitter Experience

Mark — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:30:22 +0000

I’ve used a lot of Twitter applications. I’ve reviewed at least four on this site. I generally don’t stick with a single application for more than a week or two. TweetDeck has become the only exception to that rule – it has changed the way I use Twitter. I started using it back when it was somewhere around version 0.15. Since then, it’s evolved into an extremely powerful tool.

If you haven’t used TweetDeck, you really don’t know what you’re missing. Users of Tweenky will find a number of similarities with TweetDeck, but I think TweetDeck is still the best Twitter client. It puts a ridiculous amount of information right at your fingertips, but does it in a way that’s easy to manage and use. It takes a columnar approach to tweet display and allows you to create columns for a multitude of categories including replies, searches, direct messages, favorites, groups, TwitScoop, and 12seconds.tv.

The latest release of TweetDeck (v 0.20b) came out today and implements a stunning number of fixes and new features. One of my favorite features is the ability to filter a stream based on keywords. You can choose to include or exclude a keyword to refine what’s displayed in that column. Oh, how handy this could have been during the election.

Some of TweetDeck’s most prominent appeal comes from its ability to usefully display a wealth of information. While some argue that there’s too much of a need for desktop real estate, I feel that TweetDeck’s implementation of columns is a perfect approach to enabling multiple streams without having to switch views. You can literally just watch the tweets go by without lifting a finger. Naturally, your experience will vary based on the amount of screen space you let it have, but it’s much better served for use with a widescreen monitor.

A single feature does not make a good Twitter client. Many great features, a solid user base, and listening to user requests has made TweetDeck the best Twitter client on the market today. It is a true power user’s tool, which may ultimately make Twitter noobs shy away from it. Trust me when I say once you’ve learned how to use TweetDeck effectively, you’ll probably never use another desktop Twitter client.

Partition a Hard Drive Using a gParted Live CD

Mark — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:20:14 +0000

Linux folks may know about a great piece of software called gParted, the Gnome Partition Editor. While booted into Linux, gParted works great for managing partitions on a hard drive. Windows users don’t have any good (read free) utilities like this, and the built-in Windows partition manager leaves much to be desired.

gParted Live is a CD image you can download that contains a minimal installation of what appears to be the Debian distribution. Once inside the Live CD, you are free to operate on any partition for any hard drive, since none of them are mounted. I haven’t found anything that this little CD can’t do in terms of partitioning. It would make a great utility to have in a Sys Admin’s toolkit.

You can get the gParted Live CD here. There’s also a package for booting from a USB drive.

Plone Conference, Day 2

Mark — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:14:07 +0000

So far on day 2 of the Plone Conference, I’ve sat in on sessions regarding what makes a great development team, how to become an individual Plone consultant, and the future of Plone’s user experience. All these were pretty good talks in and of themselves, but I’ve yet to find the magical session that helps me understand how to develop for Plone.

This afternoon (actually in 20 minutes) I’ll be in a session about debugging Plone, which will be extremely useful for me. After that, I’ll be in “Plone’s Anatomy” and how to theme a Plone site. I’m hoping a combination of these will give me greater insight into the world of Plone for noobs.

I’m starting to grow tired of the intellectual nature of the conference after being here for 4 days. I didn’t expect it to be this taxing mentally, but I’m pushing through until tomorrow. Hopefully when I leave here, I’ll still like Python and Plone.

Plone Conference 2008

Plone Conference 2008

Mark — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:56:03 +0000

If you’ve noticed that I don’t seem to be around much this week, it’s because I’m not. I’m attending this year’s Plone Conference in Washington DC and will be here all week. The first two days (Monday-Tuesday) were pre-conference training, and the other three (Wednesday-Friday) are actual sessions and talks. The first two days weren’t terribly helpful as I was in an introductory Python class which rehashed things I learned in my very first Computer Science class in college.

As I move toward the sessions and breakout material, the conference is ramping up in interest. Being a Plone newbie, I feel like a great deal of the material is flying over my head. So far today, I’ve been to talks on content mirroring and product migration. If you’re at all familiar with Plone, I’m very interested (and concerned) about the migration from 2.5 to 3.1… which is really why I’m here. For work.

Aside from the conference, I’ve been walking around DC and doing the tourist thing. Last night I saw the Washington Monument, World War II Memorial, Reflecting Pool, Lincoln Memorial, Eisenhower Building, Dept. of Treasury, and the White House. On foot. At night. It was a great relief from the semi-intellectual activities of the day. I can’t explain how impressive the Washington Monument is. You just have to be standing within 200 yards of it to really appreciate its size. I’ve got pictures of all the aforementioned buildings, along with a ton of pictures from the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History. There’s no way I’ll be able to upload them all to Flickr this month, so I’m not sure how I plan on distributing them.

Back to the conference… I’ve noticed that the scheduling wasn’t very well planned for my specific instance. The interesting stuff that I really want to see are on Friday afternoon, when I’ll be traveling back home (Iowa). I also feel that most of the sessions are either too elementary or too advanced for me. I’m in a weird spot where I know a great deal of Python but know very little about Plone. As usual, I’m a special case that the conference may not have been geared toward. It seems like it’s directed at people who’ve been using Plone since 2.0.

Plone Conference, Day 2

Should Programmers Use Older Hardware?

Mark — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:30:13 +0000

I stumbled across a forum thread at geeks.pirillo.com where a user posed the title question: should programmers use older hardware? The rationale behind the question was that the developer would have a better feel for how the code runs on slower machines. If it runs well on slow machines, it should run even better on faster machines.

Some people argue that development isn’t a very resource-intense activity. Sure, your machine needs to be able to compile code, serve up HTTP requests, etc, but you don’t need a Corvette to do what a Neon can do. Other users rebutted, saying some applications, especially video, are resource intense and that there’s no way development can proceed without good hardware.

In my admittedly limited experiences as a web developer, I say that it generally doesn’t matter what hardware you write code on. The machine I’m using to serve up the page you’re looking at is a repurposed 6 year old Dell desktop. It’s by no means a high-end web server, but it doesn’t need to be. I can write code and test code on it just fine. I admit this viewpoint is somewhat biased due to the nature of my line of work.

In the end it’s not development, but it’s testing that dictates the amount of horsepower needed. Ideally, companies would have a dedicated test division that’s separate from the development division. The people who are responsible for testing the software would be doing so on lower-end hardware, not the developers themselves. Developers can’t do their jobs without the proper hardware and software. The testing department is responsible for giving feedback that guides performance.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let us know.

Launchy Comes to Linux

Mark — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:30:05 +0000

Launchy is a quick way to launch applications in Windows, and now it has made its way over to the Linux world. Launchy can be installed from source or as a .deb. Launchy depends on the libqt4 libraries, so be sure to install them first. If you try installing from the .deb, it’ll tell you what else you need to install.

To access Launchy in Linux, press Ctrl-Space and the Launchy window will pop up (press escape to make it go away). Start typing a few characters and it will show you a list of options matching what you’ve typed. Double-click any icon in that list to launch an app – no more searching through menus!

Make Your Flash Drive a Portable Office

Mark — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:32:27 +0000

A portable office is a set of applications on a device that can be used in situations when the computer you’re using isn’t your personal computer or it has been locked down by your IT department. Before you read any further, please be advised that this will only work on Windows-based computers.

1. Choose a size

The first consideration you should have is what size of a drive you need. For most people, 1GB will work just fine. For those who will be frequently editing documents, I would suggest 2GB or more. I personally have a 4GB drive, but that’s because it’s also holding my music.

2. Choose your platform

There are three solutions to this problem that I’ve used in the past. The first was the U3 software that came with my SanDisk drive. I’ve abandoned that one entirely and won’t ever go back (here’s why). The second solution I found was the PortableApps suite, but I’ve also decided not to use that one because it’s not flexible enough in menu editing. The third, and current, solution is PStart. I use PStart because it’s light and flexible. The UI is non-intrusive and simple, and it’s easy to add and remove apps from the launcher. In my opinion, you should choose either PStart or PortableApps.

3. Define which applications you need

If you’re not sure what you need, you can try choosing one of the PortableApps ready-made suites. I actually use PortableApps.com to find a majority of my applications, so it’s a great resource even if you decide not to go with it. Here is a list of the applications I have installed: 7-Zip, CommandPrompt, FileZilla, Firefox, KeePass, MPlayer, Notepad++, Pidgin, PuTTY, Sudoku, SumatraPDF, Thunderbird, VLC, WinDirStat, and WinSCP. All these can be found on the PortableApps site. I also have a few Sysinternals applications too, namely ProcExp and TCPView. You can decide which apps you need, and go from there.

4. Installing PStart

I’m going to walk you through the process of installing a platform and applications on your flash drive using the PStart platform (download). The first thing you should do is find all the applications you want and download them. Once you’ve done that, we can commence.

If you have anything on your drive, be sure to back it up now.

Run the PStart installer. The installation is pretty standard, but here’s a few screenshots to guide you.

Be sure you select Portable setup from this window. When you select that, you can choose your portable device (if multiple are present) from the menu at the bottom right.

This screen confirms your choices. It also shows that the PStart installer takes only 900KB of disk space. Click Install now to install it. On the next screen, click Finish and PStart should launch. When you launch PStart, it puts an icon in your tray. To access the panel, left click on the icon and choose Show panel.

Once you’ve got PStart running, you can set it to come up in the autorun menu when you insert your drive. To do this, go to Setup -> Create autorun file… from the PStart window. This will create an autorun.inf file at the root of your flash drive, and that allows Windows to use it in the Autorun menu.

5. Folder Organization

Before you install any applications or drop anything onto your drive, I suggest creating two folders at the root of your drive. Create one folder for programs (Programs) and one folder for documents (Documents). This will help you keep things organized when your drive is populated.

6. Program Installation

If you use any of the applications from the PortableApps site, the installations go pretty much the same, so I’ll just choose one application and show how it’s done. On each application page at PortableApps, it tells you how much space each application will take up, so make sure you’re considering disk space when installing applications. Below, I’ll install Firefox 3.

This is the page where you’ll choose where you want to install the application, and the location where you would install it if you’ve been following directions. The second step to the installation process is to tell PStart that you want to add the application to its launcher. Hit Ctrl-A or go to Edit -> Add File to add the executable to the menu. If you prefer drag-and-drop, navigate to the FirefoxPortable.exe (\Programs\FirefoxPortable) and drop it into the PStart window.

7. Installing other applications

You can really use any .exe that doesn’t physically install to the hard drive. For instance, to install Sysinternals tools, I created a Sysinternals folder in \Programs and dropped all my .exe’s into that folder. Then, I created a folder in PStart and added all the tools to that folder.

8. End Result

Here’s what my PStart panel looks like after installation is complete:

It’s really easy to create your own portable office and use the applications you’re comfortable with. With some third party tools, you can sync all your bookmarks and data between your home machine and your portable applications. I carry my flash drive at all times, and it’s come in handy quite a few times.

PHP Shells

Mark — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:53:04 +0000

One of the main things I like about scripting languages like Python and Ruby (*shudders*) is that they have an interactive shell mode. This allows a developer to quickly write some sample code and see what the result of that code is. In the web development industry, this isn’t quite as common. I generally find myself creating a new file in my PHP document root so I can test a few lines of code to see what comes out of it. What I’d really like to be able to do is go to a website and punch in that code and see the result.

This is where I found PHP Interactive. PHP Interactive allows me to drop the tarball into my document root, then simply point my browser to it. From there, I can enter whatever code I want and see the result in either HTML format or raw format. This package supports tabbed text areas so you can keep some of your most used code handy.

There are a few flaws I found in PHP Interactive. The main, serious flaw is that it uses the eval() function on whatever code you put into the box. This should throw up some red flags for those using it, so make sure you’re very careful with where you put it and who has access to it. The other complaint I have is that it’s hard to write well-formatted code because the tab key defaults to its normal behavior of switching elements. All grips aside, this is a useful tool for testing a few lines of code when it’s not worth creating a new file for it.

Featured Linux App: PCMan FM

Mark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:49:51 +0000

PCMan File Manager is a fast, lightweight file manager for Linux. It’s based on Nautilus, Konqueror, Firefox, and many other programs. Its main use is on machines that have limited resources and cannot dedicate much to a file manager.

PCMan supports a wide array of features, such as tabbed browsing, volume management through HAL, file association support, and drag & drop. The best thing about PCMan is that it’s so lightweight, which translates to low load times. PCMan claims that the app can be started on normal machines in under a second. I tried this, and will admit that it comes up very quickly.

Screenshot of the main interface. You can see that there are four tabs open. PCMan supports both list view and icon view. On the left you can have either the location pane (shown) or a directory tree.

This is the context menu accessible by right click. It has most of the same options that Nautilus supports.

PCMan also has the ability to open a terminal by use of the F4 key. The terminal opens to whatever directory you’re at, and which terminal opens is customizable. There’s also the option to browse as superuser, which comes in handy from time to time.

This is the warning pane that comes up when you browse as superuser. It’s nice that the program differentiates user browsing modes so you’re not confused if you’re in superuser mode or not. When you enter superuser mode, PCMan pops up a separate window and allows you to continue browsing as a normal user in the previous window.

Featured Linux App: YaKuake

Mark — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:17:34 +0000

YaKuake stands for Yet Another Kuake KDE terminal emulator. The website is pretty lame (doesn’t look like it’s been updated in 3 years), but the application itself is pretty handy. YaKuake can be hidden and recalled by a user-defined hotkey. Users can specify how large they want the window to be, where they want it, and on what screen it should show up. YaKuake can also be pinned to the desktop so it can’t be hidden. YaKuake is layered over all windows and displays as “always on top”.

I set up my access key to be F12, so when I tap that key, a terminal drops down from the top of my screen. It’s just a standard terminal at this point, and also supports tabs. When I’m finished, I tap F12 again and YaKuake hides itself. The access key can be set to whatever the user wants, within reason (ie you can’t use “2″ as your access key).

YaKuake can be downloaded from the apt-get repo (apt-get install yakuake) or downloaded as source from Softpedia.

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