More Customizations

Two more customizations - this time relating to the system notification area.

When working on a new PC, sooner or later I end up installing 4t Tray Minimizer. I like to keep a clear taskbar, so if I have several programs open at once, and I'm not actively working on something, but don't want to close it, I can right-click the minimize button and it turns into an icon in the system notification area.

Secondly, when I have too many icons in the notification area, I like to decide which icons don't need to be there at all. For the trial period, I had PS Tray Factory installed, which mostly did what I expected of it, though it did seem to forget my settings from time to time (although that could have been one of the trial limitations).

I'd quite like to have a go at writing my own program that manipulates the icons in the notification area. When I have time. One day. :)

Conversation Context

Why are mobile phones so distracting to the point where over 30 countries have made it illegal to drive while operating a mobile phone. If having a conversation with someone over the phone is so distracting, why isn't it illegal to chat to a passenger in your car?

In England, at least, it's legal to use a mobile phone while driving, as long as you are operating the phone "hands-free". Personally, however, I wouldn't feel safe operating a mobile phone while driving, regardless of whether or not I could use the phone and keep both hands on the wheel.

The reason is to do with context, and it doesn't just apply to using a mobile phone in a car - I have the same issue with landlines and three-way-conversations involving somebody in the room with me.

The trouble is, in both examples, I'm the piggy-in-the-middle, but neither of the other "players" communicates with each other directly.

In the landline example, the other players are obviously the person on the other end of the line and the person in the same room as me. In the mobile example, one player is the person on the mobile, while the other player is the environment in which I'm driving my car.

If somebody was sat in the car with me, and the lights turned green, they could see that I was concentrating and hang fire with the conversation until they could see that there was less demand for my attention. But the person on the other end of the mobile can't see the road, and know when to pause, so will carry on talking and distracting me, without realising.

I'm sure there's an analogy to programming here, but for the life of me I can't see it... :-S

Scaffold

Ever find yourself commenting out lines of code, or adding dummy values, or setting up variables just to test something, then once the test has finished, going back through your code removing the comments, commenting out the dummy values and changing the variables back? And then repeating that sequence when you find that you hadn't actually finished testing?

I do.

Steve McConnell calls this code "scaffolding code".

I also have a tendency to forget to remove this code once I've fixed my bug or finished my test. So I've gotten into the habit of marking the change with a comment similar to

// Scaffold: added dummy value
int dummy = 3;

Sometimes my scaffold comments get lost among a sea of other code, and I forget to remove it. So to group it together, I've started using a single scaffold file / class. That way there's only one place to look for the scaffold code.

That's still susceptible to me forgetting about the scaffold before publishing my program, so I think the next step might be to create a user defined scaffold file that can be edited and stored locally, so even if I turn on all my scaffold constructs, nobody else sees them.

CloudLauncher update

Well, after a brief hiatus, I'm back onto CloudLauncher.

Just in case you don't know what it is, it's a launcher app. Drag your files / folders / executables / shortcuts onto CloudLauncher - it creates a shortcut to your file. Double-click the shortcut - your file opens. Simple.

So how is it any different to windows explorer?

Well, the main reason I wrote cloud launcher was because windows forgets my icon positions. In fact, this is probably the only reason to use CloudLauncher. For now.

Version 0.1 is available here.

TODO:

Add option to delete shortcuts!
Add option to line up icons.
Add option to edit the target of the shortcut.
Add "F2" to rename shortcuts.
Add option to choose (or disable) the hotkey.

Bug: Copy the name of the shortcut instead of the name of the target!
Bug: Don't crash if the global hotkey is in use!

Update: 29th October 2008
Added libraries to the zip file so that it compiles!

Minimize to the Notification Area

Cloud Launcher is minimizing to the notification area, then restoring when the notification icon is double clicked.

Only, for hours it wasn't. Instead of restoring, it was appearing as a tiny "minimized" window / title bar.

Turns out the "restore" / "show" order is important.

This:

WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
Show();

doesn't work.

This:

Show();
WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;

works.

Typos

I once walked in on a friend who was chuckling to himself as he finished writing an email. Asking him what he found funny, he told me he'd just realised that it would be very easy, when signing an email with "regards" to miss the 'g' and hit 't' instead.

For some reason, my fingers refuse to type certain combinations.

"tion" always comes out "tino", as in "combinatino", "productino" and "sectino"
"updates" keeps coming out as "udpates"
"cheers" as "cjeers"
"installed" as "isntalled"
and even
"Tim" as "Time".

Do you have any amusing typos?

AppendDate

My first code project article:

AppendDate appends the current date/time to a file. I find it useful for achiving my work.

How exciting :)