Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Not So Daily Util #5 - Expresso

Expresso:

If you work with Regular Expressions (who doesn’t?) this is a tool that will save you a LOT of time of debugging in VS, just install (requires registration – but doesn’t cost money) and work of the “Test” tab.

Put your regular expression in the top left text box, the text to be analysed in the bottom left box, you will see an “analysis” of the RegEx on the top right box (explaining the different parts and the matches in plain text), and once you run the match (or partial match) the results will be displayed in a nice visual way in the bottom right box.

 

There are many other tools that do this, and are free but this is the one that I feel comfortable with (check out Regulator Or ReguLazy (from the same author), http://www.regexbuddy.com/ , http://www.nregex.com/  RegExDesigner.Net, for other options)

 

Expresso - http://www.ultrapico.com/ExpressoDownload.htm

 

Monday, August 4, 2008

The Not So Daily Util #4 - 7Zip

I  kind of lost track for a while, we’re back!

I decided I won’t do this daily but only when I have something good (you know they don’t release good software that often)… so instead of the date, it will just follow a sequential number (we’re up to #4)

 

7zip:

In my opinion much better than winzip and all the rest (and FREE), unlike Winzip it supports RAR and others out of the box, in short, you won’t need any other archiving utility… has a simple and usable GUI and command line support.

 

It’s open source and the main feature is the open source 7z format, which is better than zip, also it compresses zip better than winzip…

 

Install it, you won’t be sorry. Smaller archives and faster operation.

 

7Zip - http://www.7-zip.org/

 

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Daily utility 21/08/2008 - Foxit Reader

Almost forgot, but managed in the day J

 

 

Foxit Reader

Do you read PDF’s? are you tired of waiting for Adobe to load? This is for you! A complete PDF reader that doesn’t even need an install and loads in milliseconds.

 

Foxit Reader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The Daily utility 22/08/2008 - FinePrint

This utility makes your life a little easier if you print on paper from time to time, don’t you hate it when you print a single web page and it comes out as two pages where the last one only has one line? FinePrint allows you to fix that.

·         FinePrint saves ink, paper, time and money!

·         Delete unwanted pages

·         Print multiple pages on a sheet

·         Combine multiple print jobs into one

·         Archive print jobs

 

FinePrint  - http://www.fineprint.com/products/fineprint/index.html

Monday, July 21, 2008

The Daily utility 21/08/2008 - PsExec

Hi All,

 

Trying to start a little thing here, where each day (if I can manage it, we’ll see) I will send a little email with a USEFULL (I hope) utility you might not have heard of (if you did, just ignore it). I will outline what it does and let you decide if you would like to add it to your “arsenal”.

 

The list will also be published in a website (a little blog) so that entries are archived and where I can see if I already sent it out.

Also if you have any suggestions for inclusions in the list, you are most welcomed to pass them on to me and they will go into the publish list.

 

I hope you all enjoy this, if you don’t ask and I will remove you from the list.

 

SysInternals (now Microsoft) PsExec:

This is a cool little utility that does something very good for us windows users, I was reminded of it lately when Lior asked me if I knew of a software that allows executing commands remotely – this is all the tool does and does it good.

It has always been a problem for windows users to create automation scripts that run across different machines since you couldn’t use BATCH to run a command remotely (i.e. execute winzip on a remote machine) forcing you to run the script on that machine manually – login with remote desktop and run the command there. This utility ends that need with a simple command from your machine (assuming you have permissions on the remote machine) you can now execute any command you want.

 

This is not something you will use every day, but when you need such a thing it is critical not just useful.

 

PsExec - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx (download and how to use)