Scott Hanselman

I am so very much all about SlickRun, but lately I've been branching out.

I've been using the "Ctrl-Ctrl" hotkey on Google Desktop more and more. There's a configuration option in Google Desktop that lets you indicate that you're more interested in launching programs than finding stuff. This turns Google Desktop into a fantastic program launcher, particularly for those not-used-so-often-have-to-search-for-programs that one tends to ding into the Start Menu looking for. Since I've incorporated GDS into my productively cycle as an augmentation to SlickRun I've not needed the start menu.

A while back, after I got my Mac, I (mentally) declared QuickSilver to be the greatest program launcher ever. Anyone who gets QuickSilver done right on Windows, they will have a license to print money.

Colibri is a pretty decent start at a QuickSilver for Windows. Just like QuickSilver, you hit Ctrl-Space and start typing.

The documentation is weak, but if you do a little digging you'll figure out that sometimes you need to press TAB and sometimes you need to press SPACE or ENTER to get what you're looking for.

It's about 20% of the way to being QuickSilver, but it's a great start. I hope the author keeps development up and moves it forward. 

Other apps to try out in the same vein are, of course, SlickRun, but also AppRocket, ActiveWords, and Launchy. I talked about these in my Hanselminutes Podcast #15 on Replacing Start|Run.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Carl and I will be doing a formal TechEd 2006 Hanselminutes next week as I collect more audio, but I wanted to get this little audio snippet out before Tuesday as John and I are doing a Birds of a Feather on Tuesday Night on Ruby and .NET.  It's at 9pm on Tuesday and I encourage you to come and join the conversation!

Here's very unprofessional ;) audio of John and I on the TechEd floor today.

It's attached as an RSS Enclosure, so if you're reading this post in your aggregator, look around for a paperclip or other unusual icon that your reader might use to alert you to the enclosure.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I've got a pile of demo VMs that Stuart and I and others work on and once they're all setup they tend to get pretty big. After some work recently an 8 gig VM ballooned to nearly 10 gig! There's all sorts of tips and tricks on how to compact VMs, usually by defragging and zero'ing out free space. However, I don't have the time to do this kind of stuff manually, and when I DO run through these processes manually I'm rarely satisfied with the results.

Invirtus VM Optimizer is a clever little tool that solved this particular problem. It's an ISO image that you mount within your guest OS. I used the "Automatic Corporate" edition.  It autoruns on mount and I waited for about 20 minutes. After it was done, I ran the Virtual Disk Wizard that comes with Microsoft Virtual PC (Invirtus works on VMWare also) and compacted the 9.9 gig VM down to 3.4 gigs in another 10 minutes.

So, a total of 30 minutes later I had a VM that was 1/3 the size, ran faster and now fits on a single-layer DVD when the original one wouldn't have fit on even a dual-layer one.

Full disclosure: The first Microsoft Virtual Disk Wizard compact operation failed with an obscure error message. I ran chkdsk on both the host and guest OSes, and ran again and everything worked fine. I don't think this had anything do to with Invirtus.

Here's what I can say about Invirtus VM Optimizer - It did exactly what Invirtus said it would do! Always nice to have software work EXACTLY as advertised. Frankly, I would have been thrilled with a 50% size reduction, and was VERY surprised to get 66% as a bonus. I use VMs all the time and the price is a no brainer, US$40 for personal and US$160 for Corporate. Paid for itself in one use.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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TechEd 2006 approaches...it's going to be a busy week. I hope I'll see you there!

Here's what I've got in the hopper...I've added a second session, this time with Keith Pleas.

• Sunday All Day: TechEd Pre-Conference Seminar - Architecture. If you're at TechEd on Sunday, come to the Architecture PreCon hosted by Ron Jacobs. I'll be interviewed by Ron on various subjects from 3:00 PM - 3:45 PM. Be sure to check out David Ing's talks in the afternoon!
• Monday Morning: Book Signing 10:30 AM Conference Bookstore: How dorky is this? If you're a nerd and want another nerd to sign books that also double as a booster seat, I'll be at the Conference Bookstore along with the authors of ASP.NET MVP Hacks lowering the value of your purchase with a sharpie!
• Monday Evening: INETA: I'll be at BeanTown.NET on Monday June 12, 2006, 5:30 – 7:30pm at Adesso Systems, One Liberty Square, 7th Floor, Boston, MA (directions) if you want a break from TechEd and want to eat pizza with nerds and talk tools. We're going to (attempt to) tape this session with Camtasia and post it on the Wrox/Wiley site.
• Tuesday Afternoon: ARC310  Dirty SOAP: A Dynamic Endpoint without ASMX - How and Why?
  Day/Time: Tuesday, June 13 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM  Room: 257 AB
  Speaker(s): Patrick Cauldwell, Scott Hanselman
  Not every large system in the wild can use .NET 2.0, ASMX and "Indigo". Often the real world isn't very pretty, or formal use of .NET ASMX Web Services doesn't lend itself to a particular solution. Corillian's software handles a quarter of the nation's retail banking online population with .NET. The system is built with a contract-first approach using WSDL and a custom binding to generate in-process service proxies. When it came time for Corillian to present their Operations as SOAP, we created a dynamic endpoint - WITHOUT ASMX. We then extended it to support POX (Plain Old XML). In this session, we discuss the architectural and design ramifications of managing a dynamic endpoint and how this decision will positively or negatively affect our move to WCF.
  Track(s): Architecture - Session Type(s): Breakout Session -Session Level(s): 300
• Tuesday Night: John Lam and I are hosting a Birds of a Feather, thanks to Stuart Celarier, at TechEd on Ruby and .NET on Tuesday, June 13 at 9:00 PM. What a nice way to end the day!
• Wednesday Morning: DasBlog Roadmap 10:00 AM -11:30 AM) at the WCF/Connected Systems lounge/cabana/whatever-they-call-it-this-time. We'll be talking Roadmap on the 2.0 version of DasBlog. We may just change the name of DasBlog to WTF and subsume all the W*F Microsoft Frameworks. It could totally happen.
• Thursday Morning: ARC216  Deploying and Managing Your Own Enterprise Framework
  Day/Time: Thursday, June 15 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM  Room: 160 ABC
  Speaker(s): Scott Hanselman, Keith Pleas
  Looking at deploying your own enterprise framework? What are some of the things you should watch out for? Come to this session to get some advice on ways to deploy and manage your own enterprise framework. We look at issues with versioning in the various tiers as well as dealing with multi-tenancy and the versioning issues it creates. We also cover managing and operating applications based on your enterprise framework, with an emphasis on designing a health model and enabling health monitoring.
  Track(s): Architecture - Session Type(s): Breakout Session - Session Level(s): 200
• Thursday Morning: Fly Away!
• All Week: One other thing, I'll be wandering around with my microphone and recorder taping micro-minutes for a TechEd podcast in two weeks.

Whew! What the heck was I thinking!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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My twentieth Podcast is up. This episode is all about Office 2007.

We're listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory, so I encourage you to subscribe with a single click (two in Firefox) with the button below. For those of you on slower connections there are lo-fi and torrent-based versions as well.

NEW COUPON CODE EXCLUSIVELY FOR HANSELMINUTES LISTENERS: The folks at XCeed are giving Hanselminutes listeners that is Coupon Code "hm-20-20." It'll work on their online shop or over the phone. This is an amazing deal, and I encourage you to check our there stuff. The coupon is good for 20% off any component or suite, with or without subscription, for 1 developer all the way up to a site license.

Our sponsors are XCeed, CodeSmith Tools, PeterBlum and the .NET Dev Journal. There's a $100 off CodeSmith coupon for Hanselminutes listeners - it's coupon code HM100. Spread the word, now's the time to buy.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

• Each show will include a number of links, and all those links will be posted along with the show on the site. There were a number of sites mentioned in this episode, some planned, some not.
• The basic MP3 feed is here, and the iPod friendly one is here. There's a number of other ways you can get it (streaming, straight download, etc) that are all up on the site just below the fold. I use iTunes, myself, to listen to most podcasts, but I also use FeedDemon and it's built in support.
  • Some other clients are Doppler (also suppose Windows CE), FireAnt, Nimiq, and PrimeTime Podcast.
• Note that for now, because of bandwidth constraints, the feeds always have just the current show. If you want to get an old show (and because many Podcasting Clients aren't smart enough to not download the file more than once) you can always find them at http://www.hanselminutes.com.
• I have, and will, also include the enclosures to this feed you're reading, so if you're already subscribed to ComputerZen and you're not interested in cluttering your life with another feed, you have the choice to get the 'cast as well.
• If there's a topic you'd like to hear, perhaps one that is better spoken than presented on a blog, or a great tool you can't live without, contact me and I'll get it in the queue!

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

Now playing: Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife, Part 2

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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