GeekSpeak comments edit

This process has been posted for Windows XP SP2 and Vista, but I tried both of those to no avail on this Windows 2003 system I’m working on. The idea: Replace standard Windows Notepad with Notepad2.

What I did to get it working:

  1. Logged in as Administrator.
  2. Downloaded Notepad2, extracted Notepad2.exe to my desktop, and renamed it notepad.exe.
  3. From the Vista instructions, I changed the owner of the file to the Administrators group.
  4. Made a backup copy of the original notepad.exe in C:\WINDOWS.
  5. Ran a batch file to copy the notepad.exe from my desktop into the SEVEN locations I found it under in the C:\WINDOWS folder.

Only by copying it literally over all seven of the locations I found it did the change finally take. Here’s the batch script that I ran from my desktop:

copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\system32\dllcache\notepad.exe"
copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\system32\notepad.exe"
copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\notepad.exe"
copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\$NtServicePackUninstall$\notepad.exe"
copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\LastGood\notepad.exe"
copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\LastGood\system32\notepad.exe"
copy /y notepad.exe "%windir%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe"

It felt like the nuclear option to me, but it was the only way to make it work. (Should you choose to do this, you do so at your own risk - I’m not responsible if the system feels like you’re hacking it and sucks you in like in Tron or something.)

General Ramblings comments edit

I’m a big fan and avid user of Google Notebook. Unfortunately, they seem to be ending development on it, which means I need to find another place to store my notes. Google tells you to look at Google Bookmarks, Docs, Tasks (in GMail) and the SearchWiki feature as alternatives. Unfortunately, none of those are really general note-taking devices. Docs might come close, but I’m really not interested in writing full word processor style docs just to jot down a couple of lines on monitor specs or an HTML snippet.

I’ve looked at a few solutions but none of the current “notebook” style things seem to fit the bill. Here’s my criteria, in no particular order.

  • Bullet list support. I take most of my notes in bullet list format. It’s just my style. I need to be able to have multiple levels of bullet list accessible in the note editor and it needs to render correctly when I go back to read the note. You would be amazed at the lack of ability for this in most notebook products.
  • No client to install. I don’t want to have to install anything in order to be able to read or edit my notes.
  • No file synchronization. I don’t want to have to synchronize files from one place to another in order for the notes to be “current.” I’m never going to remember to do it and it’s just going to be frustrating.
  • Mobile accessibility. I need to be able to, at the very least, read the notes from my BlackBerry web browser. Not “Opera Mobile for BlackBerry,” not some mobile note app I have to install, but the actual crappy BlackBerry browser.
  • Free. I’m a single user who wants to keep some crap in a central spot. I’ll roll my own solution before I pay you $100/year for a notebook service. Yes, it’s OK if you throw unobtrusive ads into it the way GMail does.
  • Private. I’m not interested in making my private notebook into a publicly accessible record.

To be clear, all of these are requirements. You might have the best solution in the world, but if I have to synch up files to make sure the latest version is online or on my client, it’s not on my list. It could be the perfect note-taking application, but if I have to install something on the client machine to get it to work, forget it.

To that end, I have started looking at various notebook products and have yet to be swayed by any of them.

  • Evernote: The web client is horribly buggy. You might be able to create and edit notes with multiple bullet list levels, but it always ends up flattening the list back to one level. If you want to read and edit notes with real bullet lists in them, you have to install a fat client. This has been reported in the user forums but who knows when it’ll be fixed?
  • Zoho Notebook: The web client is decent if a bit confusing. Bullet lists are only supported at one level unless you add a special “document page” to your notebook that basically makes you edit your notes in an online word processor. Totally not mobile accessible.
  • OneNote: I use OneNote for work notes and like it, and it appears you can do some sort of synchronization if you integrate it with Office Live… but it still means I have to install OneNote on the client and I don’t recall seeing OneNote for BlackBerry.

I started thinking I might be getting mentally hemmed in by thinking in terms of “notebook products” and may need to think more in terms of “private wiki.” I think that’d work reasonably well, but it still needs to fit the same criteria, so something like TiddlyWiki won’t work because of the file synchronization requirement.

How do you keep your notes? Got any ideas on what I should do?

UPDATE 2/5/09: PBwiki worked through some technical difficulties and enabled my ability to log in with my BlackBerry 8330 Curve. Their free plan looks just right for me, so I think I’ll be moving to PBwiki. (I had originally discounted PBwiki because I didn’t find a free plan; turns out it’s just not easy to find info on their site for, but it exists.)

General Ramblings comments edit

Whenever I see really cool projects like this Portal gun, I always feel like maybe I should have taken metal shop in high school or something. It also makes me realize I have no idea how to work with materials of pretty much any substance. To that end, I’ve always thought about learning how to vacuum form plastic. There’s a great site I found on creating a cheap (<$50) vacuum former you can use at home. Might make some of these crafts achievable. There’s a great walkthrough on Instructables for it (by the same guy). Here’s the vacuum former in action:

net comments edit

I’m working on an overhaul of the internal web server for CR_Documentor and in doing that I’m making sure to have some good unit testing in there. Unfortunately, pretty much everything around the HttpListener class is sealed so it makes testing difficult. Typemock Isolator to the rescue!

To that end, I had to get a license for Isolator to use with my open source project. Typemock has a model for this, and the licenses are free for the asking, but there’s not a lot of information on their site (yet) about exactly how this works. They have a decent blog entry on it, and I’ve found out a little more about them, so I’ll just bullet point it all here.

  • You can get a license for Typemock Isolator to use on open source projects from their request page.
  • The license is free.
  • The license is per-developer. Each developer working on the open source project needs to request one.
  • The license has a 10-year lifespan on it so you’re not in danger of having it expire on you in the middle of your project.
  • If you have your project running in continuous integration, you can use one of the developer’s licenses for the build server- you don’t have to get a separate license for the server.
  • If you work on more than one open source project that needs Typemock Isolator, you only need one open source license - you don’t need a separate license for every project.
  • If you already have a commercial (paid) license, you can use your commercial license on the open source project. You don’t need to request a separate license.
  • Everyone on a project needs to use the same version of Typemock Isolator. You can’t mix-and-match versions.

This is fantastic. For CR_Documentor, it means I can test not only the new server stuff, but also start adding tests for the code that interacts with the DXCore parser, since you can’t really create those structures in unit tests, either.