JB's blog

Track Folder Changes

There are many freewares out there for tracking folder changes. Some time ago I tested a few of them out and most of them didn't work correctly. 

I'm writing here a list of some freewares available on the net for this kind of purpose. I hope someone out there will test them and write here his/her comments about the ones tested by him/her. 

Here we go: 

Track Folder Changes http://trackfolderchanges.codeplex.com/

Folder Monitor http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/folder-monitor-tracks-changes-in-your-directories-windows/

Directory monitor http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/monitor-any-changes-made-in-your-folder-with-directory-monitor/ It's portable as well so in case it doesn't work as you need, at least you didn't install it. 

Watch 4 Folder http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/monitor-log-folder-activity-to-perform-actions-on-events/ Portable and it works on Win 7 as well.

Rapid Environment Editor

Rapid Environment Editor (RapidEE) is an environment variables editor. It includes easy to use GUI and replaces small and inconvenient Windows edit box. RapidEE 5.x supports Windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 2008 & Windows 7 (including 64 bit versions).

Website: http://www.rapidee.com/en/index.php

Email archiving, backup & migration

MailStore Home for personal use helps home users to backup, archive and migrate their emails, free of charge. For more independence and a better safety.

Wwith MailStore Home 5, you can create a portable archive for access on-the-go. MailStore Home also has an embedded integrated search feature, allowing you to quickly and efficiently browse through hundreds of thousands of emails and file attachments within fractions of a second and giving you immediate access to all of your information at any time.

Website: http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx

Blat a Win32 command line utility that sends eMail using SMTP

Blat is a Win32 command line utility that sends eMail using SMTP or post to usenet using NNTP.

Blat is a small, efficent SMTP command line mailer for Windows. It is the SMTP *sending* part of an eMail User Agent (MUA) or eMail client. As such, Blat sends eMail via SMTP (or internet eMail) from the command line, or CGI, ...

Home: http://www.blat.net/

Beta Blockers Hands On

It was very interesting to manage a simulation inside a real Intensive Care Unit. This is a real In Situ Simulation, and I liked a lot to play with the Philips IntelliVue MP80. Making some small changes to that patient monitor and connecting it to the SimMan 3G Patient Monitor, I was able to manage the screen image from the Instractor PC. Realism was so high the nurse didn't recognize the difference from the original screen image and touched the screen many times for measuring SimMan 3G non invasive pressure: really funny. 

Next the video about such simulation session. 

Simulation on local TV News

I was in Palermo for attending a meeting about polytrauma and managing the simulation session with SimMan Classic. 

4 simulation sessions have been planned for that date. Before the last one, a local TV came in for recording some videos about this important learning activity. 

Next an extract from the local TV News. 

Simulations in Palermo

I recorded and videoedited a couple of videos about the simulation sessions happened during the last Mediterranean Forum in Healthcare in Palermo. 

Both videos are now available on YouTube channel. You can have a look at them from here too. 

The first one is about a prehospital simulation.

The next one is about an inhospital simulation. 

Bram: Batch Renamer and Mover

Bram is the batch renamer and mover. If you've ever had a situation where you've needed to rename a group of files or folders, and maybe even move or copy them to a different location after that, then Bram can help you!

http://bkprograms.weebly.com/bram.html

Bram video trailer: http://www.softoxi.com/bram-video-trailer-screenshots.html

LibreOffice Google Docs Sync Addon "Ooo2gd"

I'm playing with Ubuntu for a while and I like it. Most of all I like the way you can create your Docs with LibreOffice Writer and keep them synchronized via Google Docs. How? Here it is the solution: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/libreoffice-google-docs-sync-addon.html

On my Ubuntu it didn't initially work because Java wasn't found. I had to install OpenJDK Java 6 Runtime and it worked perfectly. 

Free Pascal Open Source

I haven't tried it yet but I was really surprised to read about a free version of the Pascal compiler. 

It's more than 20 years since I used it at school. It was not for free: school paied money for purchasing many licenses and allowing us, as students, to study such programming language. 

I used it a t University too, during my first year, then it became old and less efficient than C, so we all studied that language. 

I ofund a link where you can still program suing such language: http://www.freepascal.org/ Feel free to test it, and share your experience here. I'll be very enthusiastic to read your comments and opinions. 

Test your ADSL connection speed

I found on the web some helpful web services for testing your internet connection speed at home. The first one is SpeedTest, which allows you to determine not only the real speed of your Internet connection, but to have an idea of the real quality of it, due to the possibility to make a comparison between your result and the others from all over the world.

In Italy, another free service with the same purpose has been developed by NGI, http://test.ngi.it/. The test shows you your real download and upload speeds.

Similar to the previous one is SpeedoMeter, from McAfee.

Feel free to write here your comments, opinion or sharing your tools for evaluating your real ADSL speed.

C# How to get all serial ports "friendly names"

I found yesterday this amazing article on the web: "COM Port Listing in C#". I was struggling with a C# program for opening the correct Serial Port (COM port), needing the friendly name, instead of the classical COMXX name.

The snippet available in the previous link helped me a lot and it works great! You can find all the hardware serial ports and the ones created by USB adapters: very cool

I really suggest to everybody out there who'll face the same issue, to use it.

Pick&Zip: online Facebook downloader

I found, tested and liked this online service for downloading pictures and albums from Facebook. It's Pick&Zip. 

You don't need to download and install anything on your PC. I don't like to install freewares on my PC 'cause programmers don't pay attention at the number of Windows registry keys they leave after the uninstallation, leaving a dirty Windows registry. 

You only need to login with your FB account for using this service. Then, you can download both pictures and albums from your friends, and yours. 

I used it for downkloading old pictures I've on my FB account and not available anymore on my PC. It worked great, that's why I suggest you to do the same. 

SharpZipLib VS DotNetZip

I'm programming a SW for unzipping a file, so I was looking for a lib to let me unzip files. At the beginning, I found SharpZipLib. It's a well done library and very easy to work with, but unfortunately there's not enough documentation available.

I psent a lot of time, with no result, in trying to add 2 progress bars to my application about the unzip activities of the zip entries in the zip file. Then I had to raise the white flag due to the absence of a documented procedure for achiving my goal.

I'm now using DotNetZip lib which seems to be more documented than SharpZipLib.

Remember: both libs are FREE

Visual Studio Express? No, I prefer SharpDevelop or MonoDevelop!

During the last few days I was programming a C# multithreaded app in Visual Studio Express 2010. Wow! It's s the first time I do it! In particular, I was playing with a Backgroundworker.

How to debug it? Maybe as all the other apps... but... where is a window that allows me to check all the running threads? THERE'S NO WINDOW LIKE THAT ON VISUAL STUDIO EXPRESS!

Looking for more detailed infos I found this page from MS "Walkthrough: Debugging a Multithreaded Application" and an interesting blog page about Visual Studio Express' limitations. VS Express doesn't support multiple threads app debugging.

Trying to find a solution I opted for a different IDE: SharpDevelop. I tried previously MonoDevelop as well, but SharpDevelop is more stable. Of course they both allow you to debug multiple threaded apps, instead of Visual Studio Express.

Browser Linux – An Extremely Lightweight & Fast OS For Older x86 Computers [Linux]

I found this amazing article on the web Browser Linux – An Extremely Lightweight & Fast OS For Older x86 Computers [Linux] and immediately I started thinking about those day I was writing my thesis with my old 486DX.

Nothing would have been much more indicated than a new OS like that, instead of the old Windows 3.11 availble on that.

Do you have an old computer you'd like to restart using for easy work, like documentation, emails, listening music and so on? This is the right tool for you

Set Ubuntu Evolution for using your Hotmail account

I'm starting to play with Ubuntu. I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 - the Maverick Meerkat; it has many features and many freeware already installed.

One of the freeware available is an Email Client called "Evolution". I set it this afternoon for using it together with my Hotmail account: funny, isn't it ?

I found on the web many pages about how to set your Hotmail account on Evolution, and the instructions about the Receiving Server were correct. But the Sending Server.

I'm reporting here the instructions I followed for compliting this task, with the correction I used for letting my Evolution to work correctly with my Hotmail account. Here's the link: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=200408

About the Sending Server I used these settings:

server type: SMTP

server smtp.live.com:587

use secure connection: TLS encryption

type: Login

I use Hotmail with HTTPS settings, so this one clould be the reason why it works with my account in that way.

Hope this helps everyone else out there with the same problem.

Extract audio from video file (.avi)

I'm using VirtualDub since a while and I'm surely not an expert in the use of it. But it's really a great tool, expecially if you use it together with AviSynth

Now I've to assemble four .mp4 videos in one, and cleaning them from a lot of noise, 'cause videos were recorded during an external meeting in a central square so there are many voices in background.

First of all, videos were recorded using 4 cameras, so I've 4 different points of view. Using a converter, I've them available in .avi format and I can assemble them in a 2x2 matrix. For doing so, I suggest you to use AviSynth, another great tool.With a couple of easy script files, assembling the 4 videos took a shorter time than using a costly SW.

Compared to professional and EXPENSIVE programs for video post-processing, VirtualDub and AviSynth are completely FOR FREE and from my point of view, they are even better in some circustances

After having assembled the videos, I inserted a small logo using the subtitle command from AviSynth.

I'd like to remove all the audio noise. How to do it? First of all, extract the sound from the video file. For doing it, use the "File" --> "Save WAV..." option from VirtualDub. It takes a short time and then you've a wav file with the sound Try to do the same procedure with another professional SW and comment here the time duration of such task. With VirtualDub it takes a short time and it uses only a small amount of your CPU.

Having the audio file, I processed it using another freeware: Audacity. Unfortunately, even if there's a procedure for removing the background noise, such procedure introduce a small amount of echo in the file, so it's not a perfect procedure. But it's better than something else: other costly SW introduce strange noise when they try to remove the background noise.

With Audacity Noise Removal function I removed a great part of noise in background and then I amplified the voice of some people. Unfortunately the video was recorded with unprofessional people and bad microphones, so voices could be recorded better. Next time it will be better.

I had fun in this activity and I look forward to repeat it

"IPhone crashes Windows XP"

It's my first week with a new iPhone 4. Fortunately I've already found a problem. Everybody told Mac has never had problems, but now, from my point of view, Mac is more similar to Windows: and I like it

In particular, I took some pictures during a meeting with my new iPhone and I tried to download them all on my Win XP. Everytime I did it, XP crashed. Solution for such issue is reported here http://mint.litemedia.se/2008/09/06/iphone-crashes-windows-xp/ and in particular the procedure for solving the issue due to the presence of a Logitech webcamera installed on my XP is described here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1511582?threadID=1511582

Now everything works perfectly and I'm starting to like iPhone

SimDefibTM Defibrillation Simulator