Windows
Make: A photoshop quick access keypad
Nov 9th
As you can imagine with the amount of photography posts on this blog, I spend a fair amount of time in Photoshop. Like most people using Photoshop, there are a number of tools and actions that I use far more regularly than others, so I thought it would be nice to have quick access to these on a keypad, so I don’t always have to go to the toolbar to activate them. Yes, I know I could use the standard keyboard and shortcut keys, but I just prefer having them on a dedicated and more visual pad than the standard qwerty. Having an old numeric keypad laying about, and having played with AutoHotKey a fair bit recently, I decided to set about reconfiguring the pad to activate my most common used tools when in photoshop. Here is the result:
The icons you don’t recognise at the bottom are just mapped to a few custom photoshop actions. The – and + keys increase and decrease the brush size.
The key tops are just printed on card, ‘lacquered’ with clear nail varnish to protect the ink a bit, and then glued to the numpad keys. At the moment it’s dedicated to Photoshop, but I’m considering re-printing the tops and having them dual use for Photoshop and Bridge. It’s not the most beautiful thing in the world, granted, but it does the job well and it will suffice for now till I feel justified in buying an Optimus OLED keyboard :P
The AHK script and icon for anyone who is interested, can be downloaded here: PS-Pad
~Shepy
Windows Re-installs made easy.
Jul 15th
I have recently built a new PC, so I’ve been planning to format and rebuild the old one to make it into a media server for the lounge to replace the ageing and slow machine already performing that function. One thing I was not looking forward to though was having to find all the drivers for the various parts, its so long since I built that machine that I don’t recall what motherboard, graphics card etc, etc I used when building it.
Now normally when I build a new machine, I’m pretty good with keeping all the driver discs etc together and handy for re-installs, but over time they seem to drift and after 2 years I’d have more chance of finding the Holy Grail that finding those discs.
Luckily a few weeks back I happened across a program that claimed to be able to rip out and backup all of the drivers from a system, ready for import onto a fresh install, so what better opportunity to give it a try.
One swift download and unzip of DriverBackup (which incidentally is free and open source) later, and I’m looking at the main driver backup window. When the program first opens, it doesnt show any hardware, but clicking the ‘Refresh’ button made it go scurrying off and collecting data about all the drivers in my system. A few seconds later there was a complete list of drivers and hardware, including some stuff I had forgotten I had even owned, but obviously still had driver files lingering in the system long after I had stopped using the device! From here you just click the “Start Backup” button, the software asks you where you want it to save the output, so i pointed it to a 4GB usb key and away it went copying driver files merrily. After about 2 minutes it had finished copying all files, and I was left with a nice directory structure of 1 folder per device, with the folder named after the device.
Sceptical about how reliable this was going to be, I formatted the machine and re-installed XP, and then once at the desktop for the first time went to investigate the state of the device manager. As I’d expected, maybe half a dozen items with no drivers, most importantly of which the network card. Not expecting much, I right clicked the offending network card and selected to update driver, then selected the option for “look in this location” for the driver, and sure enough after pointing it at the correct folder on the usb key, it had installed the driver fine and the network card functioned as expected, I was pleasantly surprised! I continued down through every one of the non-functioning items, updated driver and pointed them at the relevant folder on the usb key and they each worked perfectly every time.
I must say I am quite impressed with how effortless this made the whole thing, I half expected to have to spend an hour or so checking what hardware was in the machine and hunting down drivers, but no such pain, all sorted in mere minutes. Installing the sound card driver didn’t only give me basic sound but still installed the correct surround sound management application as well, I can see no difference between having installed this way and doing so from the original CD or downloaded setup file.
If you have a machine you need to format and re-install, you should seriously consider having a look at DriverBackup before you take the final plunge and format it, it could just save you some wasted time when it comes to getting it all back up and running again!
As usual, comments and suggestions welcome.
~Shepy
Top Ten Tools to Twitter
Mar 2nd
Twitter can be an extremely valuable and useful resource, and also very fun, but only if used to its full potential. If you are new to twitter, and only just starting to get to grips with the service then you might wonder what all the fuss is about, I know I did when I first signed up (in fact I held off signing up for so long for just that reason).
I think Twitter really comes in to its own though when you start using the various tools available to make Twitter work for you, in the way that you want it to. I had considered writing a bit of a post about what Twitter is and how it can be used but I think that is covered excellently by the page at Tweeternet so rather than go over that again, I have decided to collect together some of the tools that I use which make Twitter such a great service for me. Here is that list, in alphabetical order:
Dabr – http://www.dabr.co.uk
Described sometimes as “m.twitter.com on steroids” this little page is great for connecting with mobile devices such as phones or PDAs. It splits down your messages into the normal home feed, your replies and your direct messages, so it can make it easier to handle sources and method of reply etc. This is the homepage of the PDA I use for twittering when downstairs away from the computer.
Polldaddy – http://twitter.polldaddy.com/
One thing that Twitter is great for is asking questions, be that asking for help with something you need to know or are stuck with, or alternatively you might just want people’s opinion on something. If it’s the latter, then often a poll can be a great way to quickly and easily get those opinions from your followers, so something like Polldaddy makes that as quick and simple as possible.
Twe2 – http://www.twe2.com
Until recently Twitter used to offer the ability to receive SMS updates, but sadly this was ceased for most of Europe. Along came the nice people at Twe2 to provide this service again, still free of charge. Sign up to their service and you can get instant SMS updates to your phone when you get an @reply or direct message to your twitter account. SMS can be limited to XX per hour, and you can also limit the hours during which SMS will be sent so as not to disturb your sleep.
TweetDeck - http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
Keeping the Twitter page open or remembering to check it periodically can become annoying very quick, so I recommend that you download and install a local desktop client to use Twitter through. Personally I like the layout and features of TweetDeck, splitting the messages, @replies and direct messages up into their own columns, much like the previously mentioned Dabr. It also has the ability to monitor Twitscoop so you can see subjects and topics that are trending on Twitter, a great way of keeping on top of the news as it happens, often even before it hits the major news sites. Add in simple, or often even automatic, URL shortening to make best use of those precious 140 characters and this really is an excellent client. Available for Windows or Mac via the Adobe Air Platform. [And Linux, thanks to Chris in the comments for letting me know!]
TweeterTags – http://www.tweetertags.com
Finding like minded people on Twitter can take a while, and can often prove fruitless without trawling through friends-of-friends to find people with similar interest. At least, that is how it used to be until Tweetertags came along. This excellent service lets you tag yourself with the subjects and topics that interest you, such as ‘photography’ or perhaps ‘rock’ and have people find you via those tags. You can browse through the tags other people have assigned themselves, and when looking in any particular tag you are able to see a list of everyone who has tagged themselves, and go to their profile to follow them if you decide to. There is simply no better way to find likeminded tweeple than TweeterTags.
Tweetie – http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/
Not being an iPhone user I have no idea about which app is best to use for iPhone, so I had to turn to the good people of Twitter and see what they recommended. The overwhelming response was that Tweetie is by far and away the best, and most fully featured app for using Twitter from an iPhone. Not being a user of it I can’t say much more than that, but due to the device’s market share I couldn’t really write a post about Twitter apps without including at least one iPhone client.
TweetLater – http://www.tweetlater.com
When I first saw this service, I really couldn’t see much point in it, but the more and more I used Twitter the more I have come to love this service. The ability to send out tweets at a pre-scheduled time can be great for things such as birthday reminders, scheduled blog posts you want to tweet out, keep a constant stream of tweets going while you are away from the computer or perhaps to just space out a bunch of tweets you need to send in order to avoid flooding your followers timelines.
Twhirl – http://www.twhirl.org
Some people are limited by the amount of desktop real estate they can or will give over to twitter, in which case a client such as TweetDeck might just be too much for them. If you are looking for a smaller client that is still very useable and offers most of the features of TweetDeck, then you should consider taking a look at Twhirl, which offers a smaller interface much like that of an instant messaging client. Like TweetDeck this runs on Adobe Air, so is available for both Windows and Mac. [And Linux, thanks to Chris in the comments for letting me know!]
Twibble – http://www.twibble.de/twibble-mobile/
One of the great things about twitter is being able to connect to masses of people at any time, from anywhere. To make that work properly when you are out and about (and to get a Twitter fix when you are addicted!) you are going to need a client on your mobile phone. Twibble is an excellent client for this, working on any Java enabled mobile phone, and with integrated Twitpic you can upload those pics as they happen straight from your mobile.
TwitPic – http://www.twitpic.com
If you have a photo you want to share on Twitter, then by far the best and most popular way is to use the TwitPic service. Simply upload your picture, either via the computer or even direct from your mobile phone and they will even send out the tweet for you to announce it to your followers.
I’ve added the links to all of these tools to the navigation bar of this site so you don’t have to find this post if you come back later in search of them. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I would love to hear about any other Twitter tools you find useful via the comments at the bottom of the article.
~Shepy
Modlock V0.5 Released
Aug 19th
I have just released ModLock Version 0.5, which brings:
- Added option for up to 4 extra customisable buttons
- Added ability to check for updates manually or automatically
- Filename name back to modlock.exe to prevent problems updating
- Added double click support to tray icon
As usual, it can be downloaded from the ModLock page by clicking ‘modlock’ at the top right of this site.
As it now has update checking in, I wont be making any more blog posts about new releases, so you’ll either need to use the built in updating or check the page every now and then.
~Shepy
ModLock v0.3 Released
Aug 14th
The latest version of ModLock has been released, with the following features:
- Added transparency support
- Added auto run on startup option
- Added minimize to tray functionality
ModLock now has its own page on the site, where you can dowload it from. That page can be found by clicking the ModLock link in the top left, or by clicking here
~Shepy
ModLock V0.2 Released
Aug 13th
Modifier (Alt, Ctrl, Shift) Lock for Tablet PC
Aug 12th
Recently i bought myself a Tablet PC / notebook, which I have been using quite a bit with photoshop to modify photographs when away from my main desktop PC.
One problem i stumbled into however with this is the need to use modifier keys, such as Alt or Shift to change the way in which a tool behaves. When the computer is in tablet mode rather than notebook mode i have zero access to the keyboard, which made this a bit awkward to use the clone tool, for example, as i would have to half unfold the tablet to get to the actual keyboard, or use the huge standard on screen keyboard.
I had a bit of a search about and was unable to find software that suited my requirements, namely a small app that sat on screen and provided just the three modifier keys and more importantly, was free.
As i couldn’t find anything, and i was getting bored, i decided instead to just knuckle down and code it, and thus Modifier Lock for Tablet PC (ModLock) was born. A quick screenshot:
Avira results
Jun 27th
End of the scan: 27 June 2008 15:14
Used time: 5:41:36 min
The scan has been done completely.
48752 Scanning directories
2290751 Files were scanned
31033 Archives were scanned
I can live with that, under 6 hours suits me just nicely, less than half of what AVG was taking.
If you’re looking for some Windows Anti-Virus, especially if you have an unusual storage setup like mine, I would recommend Avira, its fast and no nonsense with a simple interface.
~Shepy
AVG Sucks
Jun 27th
Since the move over to the new 8 series AVG, it has ran like an absolute dog. Now i realise that I probably have more files than the average user, with over 1.5Tb of data on this machine, but considering that the old 7.5 version used to take approx 4.5 hours to scan, why does this new version take over 14 hours?
I have tried tinkering with the options, making sure it was set to fast scan and Googled to see if there was anything else i could do, but it would seem that its giving a lot of people similar problems with no known cure.
I’m rarely away from the computer for over 14 hours, so I don’t want to have to contend with the machine running sluggishly and being unresponsive for the anti-virus to run a scan which is why it was scheduled to do its thing during the night while I’m asleep. Its a shame, I’ve been a loyal user of AVG for a number of years now but the time has come to ditch it.
I have done a bit of reading of reviews about the various free anti-virus providers and Avira looks really quite promising. I had considered going back to Avast, but that bloody irritating “Your virus database has been updated” it feels compelled to shout periodically just annoys the life out of me. I leave my computer on 24/7 and the last thing I need is that shouting at me in the middle of the night if I have forgotten to turn down the volume. To be fair, there is probably an option somewhere to disable that, but most reviews give it a low detection percentage anyway so I’m going to give it a wide berth for now.
I’ve installed Avira, and I’m letting it do a full scan of my drives now, so lets see what it comes up with.
~Shepy