Look both ways before Backing Up, Time to stop playing with Toys

http://www.gfi.com/downloads/mirrors.aspx?pid=bkupf


I was recently working with SYNC TOYwhere I had Visual Studio files stored in a directory the Visual Studio application created for me when I started the project. I tried to used sync toy, a backup utility also from Microsoft that simply synchronizes or echos files from one directory to another. The problem was I had a project folder with the same name as the subfolder with the same project. SYNC TOY would only dump the contents of the second branch of the tree into the first branch. This made a real mess that I couldn't clean up and I wanted the project to maintain the same file and folder structure as the original project because if things go wrong I want to put it back the way it was before the failure.

I found a free utility that seems to work out well. It creates a full tree and ultimately folders containing files from what ever branch of the tree you select. You can also create backup projects and add the individual backups to a single project to back up with one click. If you want to speed things up and you only have one folder needing backing up then you can run the backup for just that folder.

http://www.gfi.com/downloads/mirrors.aspx?pid=bkupf

The backups can be batched together as shown below with the task group VS Projects.

You can do a large backup or simply synchronize files.

You select the first location then where you want it to end up and the method to get it there so you have a choice of date or date and CRC. You can also tell it which way to echo or to synchronize.

Finally you can put this on a schedule.



This is a full featured backup / files sync utility.

The Sky is the Limit - Not Really

http://www.stellarium.org/

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.



sky

* default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
* extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
* asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
* constellations for twelve different cultures
* images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
* realistic Milky Way
* very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
* the planets and their satellites




interface

* a powerful zoom
* time control
* multilingual interface
* fisheye projection for planetarium domes
* spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
* all new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
* telescope control



visualisation

* equatorial and azimuthal grids
* star twinkling
* shooting stars
* eclipse simulation
* skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection

customisability

* plugin system adding artifical satellites, ocular simulation, telescrope configuration and more
* add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...

Your my favorite, I wish I could remember your name

Favorites Plus
http://www.borngeek.com/software/favoritesplus/

The is a free bookmark export tool similar to the one that comes with IE but with some very nice features.
The feature I find most beneficial is the ability to create drop down lists.

My brother recently wanted to show me some pictures of his sons baseball team on the Internet. The problem is he couldn't remember the URL. Even when he found the site hosting the pictures he couldn't locate what he was looking for. If he exported the bookmarks to a web site he could have navigated right to it.

Many times you don't want to share company internal bookmarks. Favorites Plus is a nice way for you to seperate it out.

There are other ways to achieve the same results using social bookmarking sites such as site bar.

Here is a list from WikiPedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

Take a Note

What we are looking at today are tools to improve productivity and to allow you to work more efficiently with fewer disasters. When I say tools I really mean the line up of front runner replacements for a staple program that most people use everyday.

NotePad

NotePad adheres to a few rules, fast, simple, and lightweight. I will add a few more. What ever you open in notepad isn't going to reek havoc on your machine. The file size is small. The txt format is a standard but you can save with any extention.

So why use a replacement? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The replacements offer many features that puts more power at our finger tips. Because there are feature differences I choose to point out the ones that do the most with the least amount of skill required to operate.

Most of these are FREE.
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Notepad ++ - Open Source notepad app that goes beyond the definition of notepad. This is a easy install, go with the defaults and its ready to use.

For most people this is a nice editor but in my extensive testing it was prone to crashing and locking up. Also when copying over special characters it stops at the first special character and you loose the rest. Both of these are major bugs and makes this unusable.

Download - Executable



Here are the features of Notepad++ :
Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding - supporting many programming languages
WYSIWYG
User Defined Syntax Highlighting
Auto-completion
Multi-Document - a must have for a notepad replacement
You can edit several documents at the same time.
Multi-View
You have two views at same time. That means you can visualize (edit) 2 different documents at the same time (screenshot). You can visualize (edit) in the 2 views one document at 2 different positions as well. The modification of document in one view will carry out in another view (i.e. you modify the SAME document when you are in clone mode, see screenshot).
Regular Expression Search/Replace supported - extremely nice feature
Full Drag ‘N' Drop supported - sort of brings it out of the realm of a note pad
Dynamic position of Views
File Status Auto-detection - nice feature that can sometimes save you and can sometimes be the end of you if you don't pay attention.
Zoom in and zoom out
Multi-Language environment supported
Bookmark - again goes beyond a simple notepad
Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
Macro recording and playback - not sure who would need this
You can save several macros and edit their keyboard shortcuts for the next use.
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Notepad2 - this lives up to the notepad replacement philosophy, small, fast, and simple. The one drawback, it does not use tabs. It does have html highlighting.
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html


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Metapad - they haven't sold me but there is nothing stopping you from trying it.
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/download.html

Metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows 9x/NT/XP with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but with many extra (and rather useful) features.
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This guy has a few nice apps - http://www.paehl.de/english.php

SimpEdit 1.0.053 - is a notepad replacement with a built in Hexeditor (great idea)

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PSPad - another editor that has built in FTP and a HexEdit feature as well. The interface may be too busy to call this a notepad replacement.
http://www.pspad.com/en/

spell checker - might be useful, God knows I need it.

Here are some of its features:
Work on several documents at the same time
Save desktop session to later reopen all open files
FTP client - you can edit files directly from the web
Macro recorder to record, save and load macros
Search and replace in files
Text difference with color-coded differences highlighted
Templates (HTML tags, scripts, code templates...)
installation contains templates for HTML, PHP, Pascal, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, MS-Dos, Perl,...
Syntax highlighting auto set by file type
Auto correction
Intelligent internal HTML preview using IE and Mozilla
Full HEX editor
Spell checker
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EditPad Lite - Free for personal use (non-commercial)
Again here is a great program that has many powerful features that can be very useful to a web admin. The one feature I enjoy is a find and replace that will span over all of your open documents if you choose. It you have to admin tons of files this can make it well worth the price for the pro version, not really.

They want a whopping $50 for this thing. I would buy it at $10, no questions asked even though I use Edit+. This is another example where programmers look to cover the cost of business with corporate sales and in the long run the corporate red tape will make them the looser.

http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html

EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. EditPad Lite works with Windows NT4, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista.
EditPad Lite is free for non-commercial use. That is, you may use EditPad Lite if you do not get paid, directly or indirectly, for the work you do with EditPad Lite. Registered charities may also use EditPad Lite. If you want more editing power or need a text editor to use at work, check out EditPad Pro.
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EDIT+ (my recommendation)

If you work is mission critical and you need a powerful notepad this is well worth the money.

http://www.editplus.com/ - maybe too much going on to be considered a notepad replacement but this is the one I use and I paid the $30 for the privilege. Is it the best? Probably not but I have to use it all day long and I like the built in features. Its easy to use right out of the gate.

1-user license: US $30 - I would go with $18 if this were my product

EditPlus is an Internet-ready 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmers editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

Syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Perl, C/C++, Java, JavaScript and VBScript. Also, it can be extended for other programming languages based on custom syntax files.

Seamless Web browser for previewing HTML pages, and FTP commands for uploading local files to FTP server.

Other features include HTML toolbar, user tools, line number, ruler, URL highlighting, auto-completion, cliptext, column selection, powerful search and replace, multiple undo/redo, spell checker, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and more.
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For the MegaHigh Tech
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Scite

http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html - source code editor - this can work as a notepad replacement and is extremely powerful but I found the initial configuration to be a bit beyond the normal or even semi-pro skill set.

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Kedit - a windows based Vi like editor that has one very nice feature. A built in command line
http://www.kedit.com/index.html

Kedit has command line editing similiar to Vi. Its really a macro facility built on REXX. Check out the features page for more on this amazing editor.
http://www.kedit.com/features.ia1.html

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Full List of editors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors