Monday, January 23, 2006

I came across this while searching for a CD recorder for Windows XP.  I haven't burned a CD in a long time and I realized that I hadn't copied one since I re-imaged my system back in May of 2005.  I used to use Nero but I was too lazy to find the software so I downloaded this:

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

It seems to be a bit faster then the built in Windows XP facility for copying data disks via drag and drop.  It also lets you burn ISO's which is a plus.  I'm not sure it's ready for the toolkit yet as it hasn't proven its mettle in combat yet.

---Updated 06/02/2006---

I've used this a few times now and it did the job.  One problem I ran into is that you can't record the ISO's off network drives or drives that are aliased with the subst command.  So just keep that in mind if you are having any problems burning an ISO.

Monday, January 23, 2006 8:30:27 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [0]
 Thursday, January 12, 2006

PSPad is still the winner.   There are some odd things I don't like but for the most part I think it's pretty good.  It still loads fairly fast.  It has GREAT HTML, CSS and JavaScript support along with the color picking ability.  It integrates with TopStyle (and the free Lite) version but with the included intellisense and color support I don't think you necessarily need TopStyle. 

PSPad has made it only 3 of my 4 machines and the fourth I don't use often for development so it's not a big deal. 

All in all I will say that PSPad is the king of development oriented text editor.  For Now...

PSPad Site

Thursday, January 12, 2006 9:42:28 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [1]
 Monday, January 02, 2006

I was under the weather this weekend so I spent some time looking for a new text editor.  I had a few requirements:

  • File explorer
  • ability to view differences between 2 files
  • syntax support for Ruby
  • pretty print features

I tried out CPad and it was very promising.  However there is a little bug with CPad where the program will not close without killing it in taskmgr.  I posted the bug on the CPad form and we will see if it gets fixed.

So I tried quite a few others but none had the features I listed above.

Then I came upon PSPad.  It has the features I need plus the kitchen sink.  This thing has everything from a color picker to an ASCII table to the ability to handle ruby embedded in HTML.  Something only sophisticated IDE's are usually able to handle. 

I'm still playing with the PSPad but I think it may replace my current favorite Crimson Editor and earn a place in the Pragmatic SDK.

Update:

Yes it does do Ruby fairly well.  I must admit however that since ASP.NET 2.0 came out I haven't used Ruby or Ruby on Rails much.  I'm exploring the new features of ASP.NET and C# and enjoying the new IDE.

See the comment below for enabling Ruby syntax support.

Monday, January 02, 2006 8:08:24 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [2]