Reading the News

I decided to check out the The New York Times – Times Reader 2.0 today and it was a very enjoyable way to read the newspaper online. Much better than I expected.

Flex AdvancedDataGrid Source Code

If you happen to have a Flex Builder Professional license you also have the source code for the datavisualization components. The source is archived in the DMV-source.jar file. This file is located in the lib directory of your SDK.

For Windows machines this is

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\sdks\3.2.0\lib\DMV-source.jar


To extract the source you run the following command.


java -jar DMV-source.jar [license-file-location] [output-location]


The license file can be found here

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Flex


You can put the source anywhere but Flex Builder Professional is already setup to read the source from

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\sdks\3.2.0

so it is easiest to just extract it from there.

The final command to extract the code would be

java -jar DMV-source.jar C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Flex C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\sdks\3.2.0


Writing and only writing

I’ve just recently discovered an Adobe Air app call Focused. It is very similar to the Mac app WriteRoom. It is a free app that runs on all platforms that are supported by the Adobe Air runtime.
Focused will fill your entire screen with a canvas to so you have no distractions when writing. I’ve enjoyed using WriteRoom but balked at the $25 price tag. Now I have an alternative that I can use on my home Mac and my work PC.

SETI@Home plus other ways to share your CPU

I used to have all my computers running the SETI@Home. Then I switched from Windows to Mac and never reinstalled it. Today I found BOINC. It is a way to share your spare CPU cycles with numerous projects including SETI@Home.
I’m currently sharing my CPU with SETI@Home and climateprediction.net.

TaskPaper : ToDo or Not ToDo

Months ago (maybe a year) I purchased the MacHeist bundle in order to get the Pixelmator image editing software at a reduced price. The bundle also included various other prices of software. Some have been useful, like CoverSutra, and others I’ve never gone beyond installing, like Lineform.
One application that was included in the bundle is TaskPaper. It is GTD or ToDo list software. It seems very powerful but at the same time very simple. I’ve tried other todo list options such as, pen and paper, tasks list in gmail, Remember the Milk. Normally after a couple of days I forget about the lists. Since I’ve actually paid for TaskPaper I’m going to give it a try. Now I just need to find alarm software to remind to be check my todo list. Wait that came in the bundle as well. (Awaken)

Theme change

I was getting sick of looking at that old theme on the few occasions that I visited my own blog so I decided to mix it up a bit. NEW THEME. It kind of reminds me the of the NYTimes web site.

The writing of this entry also gives me an excuse to try out MarsEdit.

Update….. I really need to change the default picture that is at the top of the new theme.

Update2….. The new header picture is a portion of a close-up of a rusty fire hydrant that I took a few years ago.

Update3….. I found a more fitting header picture. This photo is of a storm over a volcano in Chile. The photo was found at Boston.com.

Update4….. I found yet another theme that I like much more. Very simple.

Launcher for Windows

At home I’m a Mac user and I’ve loved using Quicksilver to launch apps and search for files. At work it was frustrating me that I couldn’t do that same thing. Eventually I found Launchy. It is basically a poor man’s Quicksilver but it gets the job done quite nicely. Today I discovered yet another Windows launcher called Executor. Not sure how it compares to Launchy yet but at least the number of options are growing. Maybe at some point we’ll have some comparable to Quicksilver.