Misc
Misc
My new blog is now at the following URL :
ScotchFicelle.com
I haven't been blogging for a while now... Indeed, I'm currently working at Microsoft France and it takes up quite a lot of my time... Moreover, during the past three months, I spent all my spare time working on many different professional projects...
But now I've finished these projects, I now can work on my personal project which will combine a weblog publishing system combined with an RSS aggregator. It's been a year now that I want to release this service and things of all kind prevented me from releasing it... I hope I'll be able to publish it in the next month. Stay tuned !
I've been using SharpReader for a year now and I recently started to feel the lack of new features, and getting tired of having 200+ Mb of memory used by SharpReader. So I decided to download and test (once again) RSS Bandit, which never really satisfied me (UI was way too slow and froze all the time).
I have to admit that the new version of RSS Bandit is pretty cool and it doesn't seem to freeze anymore like it used to do... It's even damn fast (maybe my new computer is a little for something here). RSS Bandit doesn't consume more than 10Mb of memory and provides some mandatory features for an aggregator, such as the ability to flag an item for follow up, etc.. So I guess I'll stay with RSS Bandit, well, until my own aggregator goes public. Oooops, did I gave a clue on my personal project here ? :)
Please don't make me regret for having bought a dual 17" flat screen... This 23" flat screen is really beautiful !
(via Omar Shahine)
WOOOHOOO ! My favourite soccer team just got qualified for the final of the Champion's League, by defeating the londonian Chelsea Football Club (3-1 at Monaco and 2-2 at Chelsea) ! GO MONACO ! GO !
Stefano Demiliani tells us about his first 10 installed programs after the first OS installation. Here's my Top 10 (well my Top 15) :
- Winamp
- WinRAR
- EmEditor
- XMLSpy
- Fantom CD
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Acrobat
- DivX + VLC (Video Lan)
- Nero Burning Rom
- SharpReader
- SmartFTP
- Sothink SWF Decompiler
- UltraMon
- BlogJet
- eMule
When I plugged my second screen on my new computer, I wondered why the Windows task bar didn't expand on both screen.. So I searched around on the internet and I found
UltraMon. It's an excellent utility that lets you leverage the power of a dual screen
with many different features ! A must have if you are a dual screen owner.
Woohoo ! I recently received my new PC. It's a Dell Dimension 8300, with a P4 3.4Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 2 * 74 Gb (10000 tpm), ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb RAM), Dual Flat Screen 17", etc... Here are some pictures :
(That's me on my snowboard in the French Alps, at "Les 2 Alpes" station.)
Do you guys have any good wallpapers for dual screen ? I know there are some excellent ones on Digital Blasphemy, but I'm not in the mood to buy them...
A new version of the excellent blogging tool "BlogJet" is out ! Here is the changelog :
BlogJet 1.0.0.16 Beta Release Notes
March 25, 2004
FEATURES
* Multiple categories support.
* Quick test of FTP settings.
* pMachine support.
* "Delete Draft files after posting" option in settings.
* New keyboard shortcuts:
- Ctrl+Tab - switch between Normal/Code view.
- Ctrl+M - indent
- Ctrl+Alt+M - outdent
- Ctrl+Shift+N - numbering
- Ctrl+Shift+L - bullet style
- Ctrl+Shift+I - insert image
- Ctrl+Shift+V - attach voice
- Alt+D - select text in Title bar
- F5 - change account
BUG FIXES
* BlogJet This! did not work with long selection.
* Draft files handling errors.
* Login window when opening draft.
* Installer issue on "Launch BlogJet".
* Printing from code editor did not work.
* Fixed various issues with b2-based blogs.
* Ctrl+A, Ctrl+K in code editor did not work.
* Fixed issue with blog URL for Blogware.
* Code tab wouldn't appear with large fonts.
* "Access violation at address 005489A4" fixed.
* Some main window shortcuts worked in Login dialog.
* Sometimes "t" didn't work in editor - fixed.
I'm looking for a good dedicated hosting provider, specialized in Microsoft technologies (Windows Server 2003, IIS6, SQL Server 2000, ASP.NET 1.1, etc.). I globally need a Bi-P4 2,4 Ghz - 2Gb of RAM - 2 x 40 Gb RAID, 2MBps Bandwidth (burstable to 8 Mbps). Do you guys have any recommendations ?
Here are my 2 cents on RSS Aggregators :
I've been using SharpReader for 6 months now, but it's lack of features (such as flagging interested items, creating search folders, etc.) makes me wanna switch to another aggregator. I think I've tested almost all aggregators available out there, but FeedDemon and RSS Bandit were the most interesting to me.
Like many others, I've been pretty disappointed by the bad responsiveness and slowlyness of previous versions of RSS Bandit, thus, making me stay with SharpReader. But, Steve Eichert recently tested the new version and said that RSS Bandit finally worth the switch since it's now much more responsive. So, I decided to give it another try and all I can say, is that the responsiveness has been really increased. It's still not as good as SharpReader, but it's now useable ! I don't really like the way RSS Bandit graphically represents the "refreshing" process of the feeds (SharpReader and FeedDemon does this really well), but it's ability to flag and create search folders worth the switch I think...
What about FeedDemon ? Well, it's really nice graphically and technically. The responsiveness is damn good. First thing that bothers me, is that FeedDemon it's not free. Well, that's not really important... The main problem of FeedDemon to me is the way it lets you classify your subscriptions. FeedDemon should defintively have adopted a treeview with n-level of deepness. The Channel Group with the combobox is just unuseable !!! You have to switch between each channel group to be able to refresh all your feeds, and to see if you have unread items. That's the show stopper to me.
At the memory consumption level, RSS Bandit doesn't do much better than SharpReader. They both eat like 100~120 Mb of RAM ! I just wonder why they do load everything up in memory... FeedDemon is the best for this point.
In conclusion, I'm still unsatisfied with available RSS aggregators, so that's why I'm going to work again on the one I created a few month ago : http://www.myblogroll.com, a web-based RSS aggregator. So, if you're like me, unsatisfied of available RSS aggregators and interested in a web based one, just stay tuned !
I'll be there too but in Paris !
N'hésitez pas à reprendre cette image si vous venez à la Villette le 30 Mars 2004 !
Eric Sink, SourceGear father, published another must read : Getting Started with Your Own Software Company.
If you don't know Eric Sink, you definitely should take a look on his blog and read his previous column :
I now compose my posts with BlogJet ! (Special Thanks to Paschal L for having mentionned it !!)
It makes your blogging activity so much easier ! You can compose your post in a really simple maner thanks to a simple but practible UI. No more need to launch IE, go to my blog, then to the admin page, then click on "New Post", etc. It's simple, usefull, sexy, user friendly, all what I like ! Thumbs Up !
Vijay is complaining about CMD.EXE being a real pain in the ass. I totally agree with him !! At school, when I see my friends typing all those weird command lines in their black screen under Unix, I always say them : "dude, you are a crazy guy ! how the hell can you do that ?!"
Anyway, after reading Vijay's Post, I had an idea, and here is the graphical representation of my idea:
The real problem of CMD.EXE is the difficulty of doing simple tasks like moving between folders, copy an entire folder, etc... Windows Explorer now let users do this really easily. I only use CMD.EXE to perform command line stuff like, for instance, generating a strong name key. So, I just browse to my project folder with Windows Explorer and then, I open up the "Command Pane" and type in the command to create my strong name key.
If a small app could provide this, that would be so cool ! If Microsoft could implement this directly into the real explorer.exe, it would be even cooler !
Have you seen the last entry of Garfield RSS Feed ? Tapestry Comics (an excellent ressource to daily syndicate Comic Strips) was asked by UComics to remove the RSS Field of Garfield ! That really sucks !
"Ucomics.com have asked me to remove this feed."
You may not know, but I'm still a student, in last year of computer engineering school (Supinfo Paris). And in this school, many students created a .NET Group a year ago, called "Labo-Dotnet", for which I am technical writer. In order to gather french bloggers, we're going to launch blogs.labo-dotnet.com, which uses .Text of course !
So, if you're interested in writing posts (in French) about .NET, just move over to blogs.labo-dotnet.com and ask for an account !
Thomas Freudenberg made its own RSS Bandit Template, based on MyBlogroll template. Cool !
I also have to admit that RSS Bandit is getter better and better. Especially at the design level... I really am a fond of Outlook 2K3 style...
Today, I went to the "Architect Forum : Patterns & Practices" organized by Microsoft here in Paris, in their new beautiful building. I really learnt a lot of stuff about application blocks since I didn't have time to check them out and see how to use them in real world applications. The way the made their presentations and the quality of speakers made me really appreciate this seminar.
Fabrice Marguerie was one of the speakers and made a pretty good presentation about the "Aggregation Application Block" and the "Asynchronous Invocation Application Block".
Were also presented : User Interface Process, Configuration Management Application Block, Updater Application Block and Cache Application Block.
If you have the ability to participate and attend that kind of event, I really advice you to take that opportunity since you really can learn some interesting stuff, and meet high qualified people.
Last night, I went to the Radiohead concert (here in Paris, at Bercy). They were really really great ! They played for more than 2 hours and played some old songs like Karma Police, Paranoid Android and even Creep. The first part was done by Asian Dub Foundation.. I didn't know them but they also did great and really impressed me ! Can't wait for them coming back... Maybe I should go to Oxford to see them again...