f.lux is a software that adjusts color temperature for display to be easier on your eyes and brain at night.

What it does

In a nutshell app switches display to “cool” colors during the day (which is usual state for displays) and “warm” colors during the night. This makes screen easier to look at during dark hours and less likely to disrupt going to sleep afterwards.

Strong features

While it is very hard to untangle subjective from objective for such kind of a functionality, it definitely reduces that hit-in-the-eyes effect. Since the actual brightness does not change the difference in how it looks is very clear and substantial. I have warm lighting in my room and displays suddenly started to feel like they belong at night, rather being pools of alien bright light.

App derives dark time from sunrise/sunset, which requires you to set latitude and longitude for where you are in the world. Web site has helper page to determine that.

Color temperatures for day and night can be adjusted (or even flipped) from defaults in settings.

Downsides

While effect is very pronounced in a good way, it has as pronounced bad impact on colors. Unlike typical minor brightness/contrast adjustments it impacts colors much more and very visibly affects viewing angles – image can get outright orange.

It is hard to adjust to psychologically and totally unfit for color-sensitive work (for which there is option to disable adjustment for a hour). Luckily being stuck in browser or text editor of some kind is hardly color sensitive, but still takes time to get used to it.

By default transition between modes is unpleasantly rapid, but can be adjusted in setting to be dragged out for an hour. FAQ justifies default option as easier on resources so long change might be unfit for slower computers.

Overall

Your mileage may wary, but as for me f.lux makes very real and pleasant difference to working with computer at night.

Home http://stereopsis.com/flux/ 

After some searching and comparing Winsplit Revolution came out on top as about easiest and robust utility to move and resize windows.

What it does

In a nutshell app registers number of hotkeys for manipulating windows.

Core of it are:

• Ctrl+ numpad 1-9 to resize and move windows to the section of the screen
• Ctrl + cursor left/right to move window between displays

Strong features

The overly common issue of remembering shortcuts is solved very nicely here – numpad keys make a great and easy to follow mental model of how it works. Top corresponds to top of screen and so on. For each location there are couple of preset sizes, in percent of the screen taken vertically and horizontally. They can be freely modified and added/removed.

Hotkeys themselves are also fully configurable. Makes a lot of sense since notebook computers tend to not have numpad. :)

Downsides

App seems to rely on detecting which size window currently has to cycle through presets. With some custom configurations I tried it was loosing track (not recognizing current size of window) and going to start of the list, instead of next position.

Some secondary hotkeys clashed with PhpStorm and took a while to figure out, since nothing was happening from invoking function like maximize vertically in already maximized window.

It could use some way to indicate what is going on to help with things like that.

Overall

Very solid freeware utility with complete out of the box functionality, but fully customizable as well. Portable version available.

Home  http://winsplit-revolution.com/

WordPress Community Summit

I read the call for nominations to the first ever WordPress community summit and think that with that approach it will gather one amazing bunch of participants. I think hard and nominate couple of folks whose work been most appreciated and inspiring in my involvement with WordPress. I don’t nominate myself, in self-punishment for half-arrogant half-tongue-in-cheek “I am totally big enough deal for it!”  thought.

Several months later I see sparks flying on twitter as people get their invitations and think that some year in the future I will seriously aim for it. Half a day later I am staring at invitation of my own. I am told:

• multiple people nominated me
• multiple organizers voted to include me
• multiple organizers approved to cover costs of my travel and lodging

That’s after I joked that I would need to stop eating for some months to afford that. :) I wouldn’t really, but small matter of flying over ocean does amount to several months worth of food around here.

A lot of surprise in it. Somehow I tend to keep track of grudges and conflicts. Good deeds I tend to do in passing and without expectations.

Embassy of the United States

Crossing ocean, amazing technology feat that is, however is least of my problems. I also need to apply for business/conference visa to enter United States.

I google the heck out of it:

• 76% approval rate worldwide, statistics say
• 50% chance coin flip, say local tourism companies
• taking in account your country you are potential illegal immigrant until you prove otherwise, say laws of United States.

My chances are not even those of coin flip – they want attachments to be left behind hostage until I return. And here I am, alone in my flat and without desk job to head out to anymore.

I am told I am seen as unhappy and isolated in WordPress community and feel weirdly annoyed that it slips out in my online persona. Everyone prefers to be seen as happy and content online.

Every scrap of paper, establishing what I am and what I have, amounts to thin folder at very short interview:

• a lot of family, but not married (latter is what they care about)
• had not traveled abroad in recent years (can’t demonstrate I had a chance to bail and passed on it)
• “private entrepreneur” by legal status and earn living by myself (the way I am interrupted feels like a last nail in the coffin)

My thin folder stays closed through all of it. My home, the one location in the world I care deeply about, is nothing. My savings, which fuel slim hope I will be able to live in a way different from paycheck-to-paycheck one day, are of no interest. All disposable and meaningless on their scales against chance of “escaping” to their country.

I get back my passport and boilerplate response letter from thick pile of printouts. It thoroughly explains that I failed to display considerable attachments and thus guilty of trying to sneak into and stay in United States illegally by default.

I feel curiously powerless. I am lazy, but I fight battles I do pick fiercely and used to giving my all and getting my way. Not this time:

• no effort skipped
• no loopholes to find
• no leverage to apply
• no help to call for (other people are gullible and exploitable by me)
• no proof that matters (any and all documents I procure are potential forgeries)

They spend ten minutes of their time (split about evenly between security, taking my fingerprints and interview itself) for which they charge $170. The following evening I spend much longer on twitter, telling many people I won’t meet them and accepting their bitter disappointment. I should feel more grateful to them for it than I do.

We are circled by different lines on the map and someone decided we are humans of different grade.

And the problem with writing in and about the slump is that it seems like a bunch of worthless excuses prepending blog’s demise. So just to make it clear – this post is no excuse and this blog has no demise in sight. ;)

Readership

In traffic this seemed like typical year-to-year, until it started crashing halfway. Maybe Google just doesn’t like me anymore, maybe it wants to hint that more fresh content is expected.

The takeaway is that I am glad to have zilch anxiety about taking such hit for the first time. Not in this for the numbers after all.

Since there were few posts the commenting activity was just  as subdued. Crazy amount of spam on other hand – has me on brink of drastic measure, which I tend to be strongly against (making harder/impossible to comment on old posts, etc).

Content

The largest hit to the content pool was me running out of core things – actively and daily used by me. I think those kinds of posts are naturally most solid information and enjoyable to write. The upside of the slump is that I slowly attain some new toys and tools here and there with serious usage time on them.

The other personal revelation from the slump is that I prominently dislike to try something for the sake of writing post about it and acting on email pitches along those lines.  I have no intention of writing about anything just to fill the day. And seeing those email pitches coming in droves for years made me realize just how disingenuous and entitled most of them are.

Design

Technical and visual progress on the blog’s theme hit the slump as well. I think theme is holding up well, but some of the technical decisions in it are dead end.

My personal WordPress tinkering also took a heavy hit from WordPress taking over my professional occupation. Some time into it I realize that no amount of wonderful (horrible) things at work are replacement for picking and working on ones own personal creations. So I will be making effort to work on personal stuff again and push some of my private projects over the brink of becoming public and open source at last.

Earlier this year I moved to LiquidWeb VPS to accommodate for launch of my new QueryPosts WordPress code reference project, so now I also have much more freedom to tinker with internals to improve performance and so visitor experience.

Goals

While hitting slump is nothing to be proud of :), I currently feel content about the blog. It no longer has to prove that it will stay around to me or anyone else. So other than getting back into having fun with internals I am not setting any clear cut goals for the next year. Will see how it goes.

Overall

Slow year. Slumpy year. It happens, so slow or fast – let there be more of them to come for this blog.

I was pretty sure there are tools around for that and Rapid Environment Editor seems to be very popular choice.

What it does

RapidEE reads environment variables and presents them in graphical interface. Graphical interface that is actually usable comparing to native one.

Variables are split into system and user trees and color coded by type. Plus there is bright red highlight for paths that don’t exist in file system.

Strong features

The killer feature is that app unwraps long strings of texts (like PATH) with multiple pieces of data into tree branches. Presentation is much better, it is easier to add or remove something precisely and values can even be dragged to reorder.

Downsides

I hadn’t used app that long but with all my nitpicking skills I can’t think of anything. Disaster waiting to happen? Between backup functionality and save confirmation – less than usual. Portable version? Check. Command line operation? Check. I give up.

Overall

It is fantastic to see app that well done for a function that is far from mainstream.

Home  http://www.rapidee.com/

Email backup is rarely considered, since modern stuff usually resides in Internet or work-provided service, as well as naturally duplicated when using email clients that keep archive.

However there are still plenty scenarios (human error, ahem) in which mail can be lost and it is worth backup as much as any other data you value.

What it does

Simply put application connects to email account and downloads all of email from it.

Choice of sources is most excellent from generic POP3/IMAP protocols to specific email services, popular email software and some file-based email archives.

Unlike most of backups, which result in archive file(s) to stash away, MailStore packs downloaded emails in database which can be navigated, searched and manipulated in interface. Feels much like any email client and you can even quickly reply to archived emails, using your regular email client of choice.

Strong features

App has export support on same level as import, which is both important for easy recovery and makes it good option for email migration.

From few runs I did performance and stability are very nice, although first backup of thousands email messages still takes fair amount of time. App’s bandwidth usage seems to max out at 1-1.5 Mbit/s (at least for me and gmail) so it won’t benefit much from higher connection speed.

Installer comes with native portable option and you can create portable copy (with all of the data) from inside app itself.

Downsides

While the app is very user-friendly and archive that can be navigated is impressive, I don’t particularly like what it means for it as backup tool. Individual messages can be easily removed, which means there is no inherent integrity. Following backups simply add emails to existing profile, which blurs the concept of tracking changes from one backup to another and restoring to specific moment in time.

Since Home (free for non-commercial use) flavor of MailStore is simpler version of commercial Server version – developers seem to have intentionally cut out any means of automated operation. I googled up some mentions of  command line parameters, but even that doesn’t seem to work in current version.

Overall

MailStore home has excellent compatibility and ease of use, however complete lack of automation makes it crippled and unfit to be considered for any kind of scheduled backup routine.

Good choice for one-off migration or casual archive, but no more than that.

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

Seems exactly like boring task computers are supposed to be good at, right? So let’s get it simplified to one click.

Make editor respond to requests

First since browsers are best with links we need a way for editor to respond to a link.

• best case scenario would be editor having native protocol;
• if there is not native protocol there might be plugin, since I use PhpStorm I installed remote call plugin;
• if there isn’t even a plugin – pretty much any editor supports opening file via command line and with some effort you can set up custom protocol to make use of that.

Customize error output

Next thing is to make those PHP error messages. You can go wild with set_error_handler() or splice some JS to convert links.

Myself I use Xdebug which greatly improves error messages and has file_link_format option to customize links in them. So I have added it to my PHP configuration:

xdebug.file_link_format="http://localhost:8091?message=%f:%l"

Profit

Cick file name in error message – have file instantly opened at specific line in editor.

One of those minor improvements that make surprisingly huge difference by eliminating routine and boring mini-task.

Google Refine looks loosely like yet another spreadsheet editor, but is built precisely for fixing and cleaning up data.

What it does

Unlike most Google products Refine is software that needs to be downloaded and run locally. Technically it works like a local web server, which from practical point of view means that its interface is a web page in your browser of choice.

Data can be imported and exported in variety of formats and in-between is saved as part of Refine project.

General workflow is essentially picking and using facets to isolate sets broken/undesirable values and editing, removing or otherwise getting rid of them.

Strong features

Facets can be picked from predefined suggestions or constructed from scratch, using functions from provided expression language. They can range from very simplistic (facet by presence of specific word) to very complex (facet by largest Unicode character code, present in value).

For textual values Refine offers clustering feature that runs values through different algorithms and suggests those that are similar to be grouped together.

While spreadsheets editors often rely on dynamic values (columns based on other columns in some way), Refine treats data  as static and applies all changes immediately. However all changes go into a log, which allows to roll back to any point as well as export changes as set of instructions an run them differently or even in different project.

Downsides

Refine is not overly user-friendly application. It gives user a lot of control but cares little for some simple things that would make a difference. For example it is somewhat weak with type casting – as result empty (null) values tend to wreak havoc as inappropriate input for operators. Easily fixable by changing them into empty strings (see the meaningful difference? neither do I) but after umpteen times just makes you wish it did that on its own.

Web page as interface is surprisingly robust. Still there are some things that just don’t work usual way (like aimlessly scrolling through) and facets tend to evaporate when project is closed, which is huge pain when you just nailed that perfect setup for the task.

Overall

Google Refine is rare combination of functionality that is both specific and flexible, while free and actively developed. It has plenty of learning curve (start with introduction videos) but it pays off well by turning data cleanup into relatively smooth and almost enjoyable process.

Home http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/

In a while I had a topic and some tools to get this small personal project going – I took results of large WordPress survey that run last summer and tried to shape it into visual reflection of community that took survey.

So after  some serious struggles with data aggregation, defeating broken encodings and normalizing more currencies than I have ever seen in my life… I present you WordPress Survey 2011 in pie charts. And some bars.

Click through to for  full dynamic version.

I will much aprecciate feedback how did this attempt go and probably will write about tools I used separately.

What it does

Rainmeter itself is an engine that runs in the background and powers up skins (I think widget is more generic term for such). Skins display data retrieved by Rainmeter – from as simple as free drive space to as complex as parsed out of remote web site.

Skins can look like anything and be visually rich (one of skins featured on site):

Or bland and minimalistic (my own work-in-progress skin):

Now that I compare it to my past Samurize config – my ability to put together something visually non-hideous had really improved since.

Strong features

The way Rainmeter works is very free-form – INI file based text configurations describe skins, which are mostly combinations of measures (data retrieval) and meters (visualization of measure output). Both have vast amounts of parameters and resulting skin can make use of image files (including rich color manipulation) and be interactive (react to data or user input).

App is very light on resources and plays well with most recent Windows versions, including 64 bit builds. You can even easily incorporate Aero transparency features in skins.

Downsides

While INI format is plain text and one of the easiest to grasp, it is really painful to bend it to describe complex concepts. Rainmeter probably started with functionality for which INI was perfectly sufficient, but more complex things (such as nesting rules and data calculations) are really pushing its limits.

As result it is often frustrating to express your thought in config or get absolutely unhelpful error message (hidden in log) that something that you are doing is not quite right. Pointing out that specific something is often not included.

Overall

It is hard to summarize Rainmeter, because how well it will work for you depends on how much you need from it and how dedicated you are to get it. On one end there are people who just want to download and use ready-made skin, on another – willing to study dozens of pages of manual (and maybe dive into Lua  script support).

Anyway Rainmeter definitely is powerful and  open source  software project with native portable install option.

Home  http://rainmeter.net/