I’ve done a lot of flash video players over the years. Too many.

Some had custom interfaces, some used the default flash video component. Others were completely custom, managing the stream events and displaying the video in the vanilla video component. Then Dave came to me with the OSMF Strobe Media Playback component.

We had tried the JW Player a couple of times before, but found the per domain price a little excessive outside of large clients.

But, the Strobe Media Playback component offers a versatile solution which is usable and good looking out of the box.

Nice one.

Started out playing around with Python as a scripting tool. Have to say, it really is a neat mix of the kinda power and libraries I’m used to with Perl and the flexibility of a pure scripting language.

Just for a giggle, I decided to re-write my C# backup script to backup some of my mac folders. Most of the language I’m still getting my head around. 4 times out of ten, each line gets a semi-colon. I’m using PyDev on Aptana.

Here’s the code I ended up with: (more…)

Recently started work on a new website. We’re using the Kentico CMS, and came across the following while building some search based functionality:
http://www.kentico.com/Docs/DevGuide/smart_search_overview.htm

The lads have integrated their system with a C# port of the lucene search engine library. From what I’ve seen so far, this gives developers really powerful search and sorting options. A summary of some these options can be found here http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_1_0/queryparsersyntax.html.

Like I say, I’ve only started on this, and will update this post when the project is finished.

A few years ago I was in my Boss’ office in Interactve Services. He was showing me something on his computer, and I saw that his filing system was a system of folders named according to the date. So he never had a build up of files in one particular place.

I took this system on-board and modified it to my needs, and just thought I’d share it here. I have a folder on the desktop called “_today”. Into this I put every file I create/view/save on a particular day. Then I have a little program I wrote in C# which runs at startup. This runs every time I login and takes the contents of the _today folder and moves them into a backup folder in My Documents named after the date.

Here’s the source for the app. You can have it run on startup by dragging a shortcut to the application into Start » Programs » Startup.

Dowload (zip)

If you’re looking for a bit more information than Task Manger manager provides, Process Explorer, also from Microsoft may be the answer. With it you can view your processess in a hierarchical tree, find out what processess are safe and find out which process is running a particular window.

These are just a few of the capabilities, and you can configure it to run instead of Task Manager at the click of a button. Click here to find out more.

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