LogMeIn to the rescue!

Have you ever been at work and realized you needed something from your home computer?  Have you tried calling to someone at home to send you what ever file you needed by email?  Worst yet, have you had to drive home due to the fact you wanted a file from your home computer?

Well, that very situation happens to me on a somewhat regular basis.  No, I'm not an air head, but I do work from home and the office, so sometimes, the latest version of my work is at home.  This has bugged me to no end.  I don't want to setup an FTP server at home just so I can access those files since then it becomes a management nightmare.  I want to be able to remotely control my machine from wherever I am (office, vacation, remote site) without having to install a bulky app.

I did some research and found LogMeIn.  Now this is a Remote Desktop software that works through the web browser.  It's encrypted, password protected and fast!  It's so good, that it's the unofficial remote desktop software that my co-worker use to work from home!  I use it to have access to both my computers at home and to troubleshoot computers of friends and family.  The great thing is there's an version that is free!  You read right, free!  If you can live without remote printing, sound & file moving, then you can use the LogMeIn Free edition.  If not, they have LogMeIn Pro for a small monthly fee.  For what I use it for, I use the free edition.  Simply go to http://www.logmein.com and create yourself an account, you'll be glad you did!

Visual Studio Google Gadget - Revisited

Since my last post on Google Gadgets, I have used my Visual Studio Recent Projects gadget on a daily basis.  It quickly occurred to me that there are enhancements to this gadget that would be useful immediately and not just to me, but to the general public.

Here's a quick rundown of the enhancements that I thought would greatly benefit my Google gadget:

1. Change the blue underline (anchor link) to something more pleasant
   
2. Highlight the item that you're over in a different color to see which one you're selecting
   
3. Remove file extensions to the items listed
   
4. Ability to see more than just the first 6 projects/solutions
   

The first 2 items is pretty self explanatory: it's ugly the way it is.  It's functional, but it detracts the eye and is esthetically unpleasant.  So I went in the code and changed it to be an off white color with no underline.  I then added code to change that color to a soft yellow when the mouse hovers over the item.

The 3rd item is simple to fix but then brings up a new issue: how do you tell the difference between a solution (.sln) and a C# project (.csproj) in the list?  My thoughts on this at the moment are:

• add a tooltip to the items that would add the full path & filename and, to add a little bit more information, when was this item last opened.
• add an icon in front of each item that would differentiate each item based on their extension.

I changed the code to remove all extensions, and added an icon based on the first 3 letters of the extension.

The 4th item is easy in concept: have pages of x items show up and a way to move between pages.  The implementation wasn't as easy.  It wasn't complex, but wasn't complying very well either.  Basically, I figured out how many items I wanted to display on a page (which is 7), then I used math and constants to figure out on which page the user is on to display the proper items out of all possible ones.  I gave the user 2 arrow buttons to allow the user to navigate forward and backwards in the pages.  The list is not sorted, just the same order that it is in the MRU registry.  I guess that could be a future enhancement.

The end result looks something like this:

As you can see, it looks much better than the 1st iteration of the gadget.  With all this, what's left to add you ask?  Where if you remember, I mention that a tooltip would be useful.  A tooltip with the full path of the item would be useful in cases where there multiple versions of the same project  How do you tell them apart?

 

If you have any suggestions as to what other enhancements this gadget could use, please leave a comment and I'll definitely consider it.

As always, you can download the most recent version of the gadget (Visual Studio Recent Projects-Sebastien Limoges.gg) and you can read up on what people have to say about it by going to it's Google page.

Until next time,

Sebastien Limoges

Holidays, sickness and work

Hello all and happy 2009!

I'm sorry there's been such a gap between this post and last post. With the holidays, work and me being sick, there hasn't been much time for me to post. I'm hoping to get back on track and keep you posted on my progress (or lack thereof) on my GPS Golf project.

In the spirit of this project, I went out and tried my hand at a round of golf this past Saturday and have played what is probably my worst round EVER since I've been married and moved down to Florida. I posted a 118, with at least 3 holes of 10 strokes! The other big change was that I also posted many 3 putts, which is a rarity for me usually. What is the cause of this abomination? My tempo was off, I could barely breath (breathing through my mouth, except when swinging, which raised my blood pressure I'm sure) and the fact that I'm following a friend's suggestion and changed golf balls from Nike Distance to Bridgestone e6+. Golf balls don't mess your game you say? I disagree... especially if they add about 20 yards to your distance and have enough spin to stop (or backspin) once they hit the green. Try to figure out during all this disarray which club to hit to reach the center of the green which is 156 yards away... oh and don't forget that your normal 7 iron won't do now that it's 170 yards and not 150 yards! Anywho, I have work to do. I have to work on my tempo, keep strenghtening my fingers and get better health wise. The only worthy shots to note are a 60 yards chip in the hole and a 42 foot down side hill put to save par.

With all that said, you have a good week!

Sebastien