Categories
Product Reviews

Can't Play A Video? Try VLC

One application that I always install when I set up a new machine, is VLC – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

What is nice, is that it will play just about anything. Video, Audio, whatever. It will play AVI’s, DVDs, Mp3s, FLV’s, and any other 3 letter acronym you can think of.

You can set it to be default for all these types, or just use it when you need it. It is open source, and free. Other apps are built on VLC as well (Miro for one)

What is nice, is that it is cross platform, so I can use it on Windows, Mac, and Linux!

When in doubt, install VLC 🙂

Categories
Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

HowTo: Find a Domain Name Quick

I usually buy domain names when I think of something cool and it is available. (ilovetotsinpdx.com anyone?). The easiest way to find domains the "Web 2.0" way is using this cool AJAX’y interface to search open domains.

http://instantdomainsearch.com

Makes it fun and easy! BTW I do use http://www.active-domain.com for my DNS/domain registrar and I use http://hostmysite.com for all my hosting. Why? Just because I found it easiest 🙂

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Categories
Business Intelligence Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

SSASUtils: SQL Server Analysis Services Utilities – CodePlex

So, today I decided to try out Microsoft’s site: CodePlex. I recently created a utility app to process dimensions and partitions in SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services) because I didn’t like the way it worked in SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio). I don’t know because I never used it, but I guess in pre-SP2 you could process multiple objects at the same time, just hit process, move on to the next one. In SP2, the process dialog is modal so you can get around it, you have to wait for the object to process – yuck!

Also, I just wanted to try out CodePlex and see how it works, what I like and don’t like. Since becoming a contractor doing Data Warehousing and BI stuff, I miss coding in .NET (and any other language), so I want to keep that up in my free time. This is a result of that. Hopefully once I get used to CodePlex I will contribute to some other Open Source .NET Projects, sounds like fun to me!

Here is the link to the project: http://www.codeplex.com/SSASUtils

Some of the glue code for connecting and processing I gleamed from other examples and projects I have seen around the web, some in VB.net , some that didn’t even work, etc. Hopefully more SSAS Utils can be added to this project and it can become way more useful that it is now (although I do use it pretty much every day right now).

CodePlex: I like it so far. There are few things that could be done better, but I am using the Team Explorer source control which fits nicely into VS2005, really cool. I will probably post up more on CodePlex later. If I get the urge, I might create project for some other stuff I have lingering around my hard drive (FFMC, PocketBlogger, other random utils). I am anxious to see what the community participation is like, I tired GotDotNet back in the day and it was weak, we will see with CodePlex.

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Business Intelligence Geeky/Programming Product Reviews SQLServerPedia Syndication

Reporting Services Scripter: Sync Reporting Services Instances and Objects

The other day, I was tasked with moving all objects from one SQL Server Reporting Services instance to another. I know you can move the database itself, but then you run into issues with encryption keys etc. I just wanted to move the objects. I know that pretty much everything in SSRS is extensible, so I knew I could write something to do it, but before I went out and coded it, I Googled first to see if someone else had something. Turns out there is an awesome utility: Reporting Services Scripter. Works like a charm!

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Random

Walk Score

Stumbled across a pretty cool site the other day, Walk Score (https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works) – you put in your address and it gives you back a score between 0 and 100 about how good your location is to walk around to other places nearby. I got a 94/100 – pretty good!

Here is my walkscore link:

http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.shtml?street=2190+W.+Burnside+St&loc=97210&go=Go

 

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Product Reviews

Veign Pixeur Tool

ok, im blogging this because on every pc I install, I always install this tool but can never find the homepage. This is the coolest little color picker for windows, I use it when I want to hack colors 🙂
http://www.veign.com/download_app.asp?app=107

Categories
Random

Free Annual Credit Report

Actually, I think I found this in Playboy. I guess starting this year like every state has to allow you to check your credit report free of charge, so I decided to check it out. It lets you check it from 3 credit reporting agencies, and you can save/print it out. Easier than paying $34.99 or whatever it is.

Annual Credit Report

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Strings For Windows XP

Strings….nice tool. In Unix/Linux, there is a utility called “strings” which you can use to search files/directories for strings (duh). Anyways, if you want it for Windows XP, you can download it at sysinternals (along with a ton of other cool tools.) I use it alot…for example: In Visual Studio.NET, you can set words to use in comments that will show up in a task list, like ‘TODO, ‘HACK’, etc…and then that line with show up in your task list. Well, when I have to do any classic ASP coding, I use textpad, and it doesnt have a cool task feature like that. If I still use those words, I can mimic a task list. So in my ASP code, I write

‘TODO: Add more logging

and various others on all pages in an application. Then, when I want to build a task list, I fire up cmd.exe, and type

>strings -s serverdirectory | find “‘TODO”

and it will list out every page and line that I have written that. Very cool.

There are tons of other unique uses for this utility also, you should check it out.

strings @ sysinternals.com

Textpad

Categories
Product Reviews

Online Eye

Have you ever wanted to monitor your network speed? A co-worker of mine stumbled up Online Eye. I installed it, and it is pretty cool Send and Recv traffic graphs, and if you dig it, has all network tools (ping, trace, whois, etc).

Use this tool if you want to measure your bandwidth!!

Online Eye