FreeCommander and File Explorer

I was suffering too much from Windows File Explorer. I always open many views to handle file. Spend much time in going to folders to do repetitive tasks. I was sure that there is a better solution. After some research and trail to some tools, I found a great tool called, FreeCommander.
I actually tried it and enjoyed it a lot. I hoped I use open source tool, but did not find anything usable. FreeCommander is free ware and much better than File Explorer.

Here is a list of features from their website:

Main features in FreeCommander:

* Dual-panel technology - horizontal and vertical
* Tabbed interface
* Optional tree view for each panel
* Built in file viewer to view files in hex, binary, text or image format
* File viewer inside archives too
* Built in archive handling: ZIP (read, write), CAB (read, write), RAR (read)
* Nested archive handling
* Built in FTP client
* Easy access to system folders, control panel, desktop and start menu
* Copy, move, delete, rename files and folders
* Multi rename tool
* Wipe files
* Create and verify MD5 checksums
* File splitting
* File properties and context menu
* Calculation of folder size
* Folder comparison / synchronization
* Modification of file date and attributes
* Folder / program favorites
* File searching (inside archive too)
* File filters for display
* User defined columns for detailed view
* DOS command line
* Multiple language support

I like the dual pane idea, and the ability to store many folder combination to switch between them easily.

Read full details and download from http://www.freecommander.com/

The camp? I swear that I would sacrifice my life for the camp!

-The camp? I swear that I would sacrifice my life for the camp!

The camp means everything to me and to all its inhabitants.

The camp is our soul. Our life

and it will stand high and proud forever, it has always been so anyway.

Everywhere in the camp you find someone looking for a relative

There is not a single person at the camp who was not suffered.

looking for their home or a missing body.


But we will not give up

Yes they destroyed everything but we will re-build it despite their presence.

We will re-build everything on the basis of resistance and Sharon must be aware of the resistance of the Jenin camp for all his life.

I would like to say something which has nothing to do with hope or all that ensues but to the Israelis I have to say:

“Proud as eagles we will live Erect as lions we will die”

May each Israeli bear this in mind.

Jerusalem is ours.

Jerusalem is ours.

When I heard that Sharon was coming to the camp, I was so angry that I burst into tears

Because I had a great desire to take revenge on him, to torture him so to speak.

-Do you believe you can defeat Sharon?

-Yes I can, why not?

-He is stronger than you. How would you be able to?

-I am stronger than him thanks to my will. I can defeat him thanks to my will. Because I am defending my nation, because he murdered innocent people whom I knew very well. I can defeat him because he has dispersed our people.

He destroyed each corner in the camp without sparing one single house.

-what would you do if you had a million dinars?

-I would donate them to the injured to buy blood and to re-build the camp.

-Me too. I would donate them to the office to divide it amongst the homeless they could rent some caravans until their houses re-built so that the camp will look better than before.

If I were old enough I would have donated my blood to the injured.

Fighting the enemy, this doesn’t mean that I am cruel. I defend my motherland. I defend my camp.

We will never make peace with them. Even if our president does so .I will never make peace with them. It is true that I am a good person but Jews are hateful. They invaded us. We are defending our land.

If they capture your son wouldn’t you do anything to get him back?

So we feel the same for our land. Our land means everything for us.

As we used to say: Our woman still exists.

We will keep on having children. They will become stronger and braver than ever.

I am not afraid of these cowards.

They are like mice. Despite their great weapons.

They still hide behind their tanks. Afraid of civilians like us.

Their cowardice is legendary.

We are not afraid of them no matter what they do.

Their bombs came down on us like water because they
are losers and cowards…

Let the Jews come and see the camp and experience the bombardment we endured for just one day.

They would immediately forget their idea of a Great Israel and of Jerusalem as its capital.

If only a Jew could experience what we have been through for one day!

They would abandon their conquest of Jerusalem.

I saw died bodies…houses in ruins…and undescribable atrocities.

After all I have been through what will become of my life?

After they shattered my dreams what is left for me to say?

There is no life.

The camp is like a tall eminent tree the tree has leaves and each leaf of this tree bears the name of a martyr.

I would like to say to the Jews that even if they break a few branches others shall grow in their place were not able to reach the top of the tree.

-The camp? I swear that I would sacrifice my life for the camp

The camp means everything to me and to all its inhabitants

The camp is our soul. our life

My greatest wish…

My greatest wish is to go back home.

Windows Command Line Mailer : Blat

Blat - A Win32 command line SMTP mailer. Use it to automatically eMail logs, the contents of a html FORM, or whatever else you need to send.

Enjoy it at http://www.blat.net/

ITIL v3 Service Operation Presentation

It is a presentation I prepared and conducted internally at my current employer. It helped me a lot to understand Service Operation. It is amazing how much you learn when you educate others.
It is located at: ITIL v3 Service Operation Presentation

Eclipse Integrated Task Management, Mylyn

I want task management tool that integrates seamlessly with my development IDE, as I am using Eclipse WTP mainly, I researched Eclipse plugins and found Mylyn.

I created local repository of tasks and simply starts, and mark task completed. Mylyn takes care of calculatig the time spent on each task. When I finish tasks and commit chnges to subversion, Mylyn automatically list tasks in my commit note dialog box.

However, Mylyn have wider scope of what I am using, see the following Mylyn description from its web site: http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/

Mylyn is a task-focused interface for Eclipse that reduces information overload and makes multi-tasking easy. It does this by making tasks a first class part of Eclipse, and integrating rich and offline editing for repositories such as Bugzilla, Trac, and JIRA. Once your tasks are integrated, Mylyn monitors your work activity to identify information relevant to the task-at-hand, and uses this task context to focus the Eclipse UI on the interesting information, hide the uninteresting, and automatically find what's related. This puts the information you need to get work done at your fingertips and improves productivity by reducing searching, scrolling, and navigation. By making task context explicit Mylyn also facilitates multitasking, planning, reusing past efforts, and sharing expertise.

If you want richer features of Mylyn, try its commercial version TaskTop at: http://tasktop.com/tasktop-for-eclipse/

ArgoUML for Database Modeling

I use ArgoUML for database modeling, just add some stereotypes such as Database, Schema, Table, PK, FK with class diagram.

For a typical example, see this useful page, http://argouml-db.tigris.org/documentation/UML_Model.htm

Java Service Launcher; or Quartz !

The Java Service Launcher is a small executable to start JAVA-programs as a Service under 32bit versions of Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and XP.

I used it successfully to run background services to maintain index files. See it at: http://www.roeschter.com/index.html

As I really need to run scheduled tasks in the background, say each 1 hour, I found Quartz a better solution.

Quartz is a full-featured, open source job scheduling system that can be integrated with, or used along side virtually any J2EE or J2SE application - from the smallest stand-alone application to the largest e-commerce system. Quartz can be used to create simple or complex schedules for executing tens, hundreds, or even tens-of-thousands of jobs; jobs whose tasks are defined as standard Java components or EJBs. The Quartz Scheduler includes many enterprise-class features, such as JTA transactions and clustering.

I am not yet used Quartz, but it is in my TODO list.

Launch4j , Java to Exe

I am using java actively and sometimes want a simple exe file for easier usability to my users. The problem with batch files is the black command consol that should appear in the background. Also, most java desktop software now has its exe file, as example Eclipse, Netbeans.

I found a very nice article at, http://www.javalobby.org/articles/java2exe/, I tried many but became very satisfied with launch4j at http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/

Launch4j is a cross-platform tool for wrapping Java applications distributed as jars in lightweight Windows native executables. The executable can be configured to search for a certain JRE version or use a bundled one, and it's possible to set runtime options, like the initial/max heap size. The wrapper also provides better user experience through an application icon, a native pre-JRE splash screen, a custom process name, and a Java download page in case the appropriate JRE cannot be found.

ArgoUML

I need to draw some UML diagrams, I tried StartUML and ArgoUML. StarUML is not updated since 2005, so there is doubtes about the future of it. In contrast ArgoUML is actively developed and improved over the years.

I seamlessly downloaded it as a standalone project and as an Eclipse plugin, both worked without problems. However, the Eclipse pluging version is defferent from the standalone version, so I can't edit the same file by the plugin and standalone tool.

Try them at:

1. ArgoUML home page at, http://argouml.tigris.org/
   
2. ArgoUML Eclipse Plugin at http://argoeclipse.tigris.org
   

CommitMonitor, Monitor SVN Commit

To be able to monitor several SVN repositories, I have to check periodically using any SVN client toole. Of course this is not a good solution. As a better solution I installed SVN hook on each repository to send me an email on each commit. It works good, but some of the repositories is from other sources that I have no control on it.

I found CommitMonitor tool which you can register any number of SVN repositories and it will periodically check for new commits and will report it.

I tried the tool and found it easy to install, configure and use. Look at: http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/CommitMonitor