Thursday, December 23, 2010

Update: BatchTouch v1.2.0


What's New:



New Features:
  • It is now possible to have default settings loaded at startup. If a default.bts settings file exists in the application folder of BatchTouch, it will be applied at startup.
  • It is now possible to specify date offset in days, months, and years.
  • It is now possible to enter values for date and time manually.
  • Added special function "Set Modification Dates to Creation Dates".
  • Added special function "Set Creation Dates to Modification Dates".
  • Added a menu item to save current settings as default settings.
  • Added an option to automatically check for updates at startup.
Improvements:
  • Improved calendar display.
  • Improved GUI help tag texts.
  • Improved exception handling and error reporting
  • Improved handling of command line arguments.
Fixes:
  • Fixed a bug that retrieved incorrect settings from the GUI.
  • Fixed a bug which would cause user defined time values to be overwritten after selecting a new date via the calendar display.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Update: CoolTerm v1.3.0


I'm happy to announce that CoolTerm v1.3.0 has finally been released today. Many thanks to all the beta testers for the helpful feedback! Here is what's new:


New features:
  • Added a transmit line delay option which adds a specified delay after certain characters such as new line characters (configurable).
  • Added a transmit character delay option (configurable).
  • Added a "Connection/Send Break" menu item for sending serial breaks.
  • Added the option to play a notification sound after a text file has been sent.
  • Added auto-connect feature.
  • Added the .hex file extension to the "Text Files" file type set (for the "Send Text File" dialog).
  • It is now possible to have default settings loaded at startup and when a new terminal window is opened. If a default.stc settings file exsists in the application folder of CoolTerm, it will be applied to new terminal windows.
  • Added a menu item to save current settings as default settings.
Improvements:
  • Pressing ENTER or RETURN in the connection settings dialog now envokes the "Ok" button, even if a textfield is currently selected.
  • Pressing ESC in the connection settings dialog now envokes the "Cancel" button, even if a textfield is currently selected.
  • Pressing Shift+ENTER or Shift+RETURN now invokes the "Send" button in "Send String" windows.
  • Improved handling of command line arguments.
  • The values for "Receive Buffer Size" and the character and line delays are now limited to a range from 0 to a maximum value (2,147,483,647 and 10,000, respectively).
  • When a "Send String" window is opened, the text field now receives focus automatically.
  • Improved exception handling and error reporting.
  • Improved behavior of the command history buffer and menu.
  • GUI improvements.
Fixes:
  • Fixed a bug that allowed opening multiple "Save As..." for the same Terminal window dialogs on Windows.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a StackOverflow on serial port errors due to calling port.flush
  • Fixed bug that could cause a crash when sending empty strings via a "Send String" window.
  • (Win) Fixed issue that would allow the terminal window to be activated via the taskbar when the connection options window is open.
  • Several minor bug fixes.
Get it at http://freeware.the-meiers.org

Friday, April 09, 2010

Update: BatchTouch v1.1.0



What's new:


  • Made the file list wider and added columns for modification and creation date.
  • The new columns show the modification and creation dates of each item after they are added to the list and after they were changed by BatchTouch.
  • Added preferences Window.
  • Added option to preferences window to show/hide the date columns in the file list.
  • Added option to preferences window to disable warnings before changing dates.
  • Settings can now be saved and retrieved.
  • It is now possible to drop a file or folder onto the "New date:" group box to set the new date and time automatically to the modification date and time of the dropped item.
  • It is also possible to drag and drop an item from the file list to the "New date:" group box to set the new date and time automatically to the modification date and time of the dropped item.
  • Added a "Special" menu to provide access to special functions.
  • Added a "Set Folder Date to most recent content" special function. This option sets the modification date of all the folders to the modification date of the most recent item inside them. This is done recursively, from the bottom to the top of the file hierarchy.
  • Added special function for pre-dating all items to the oldest item in the list.
  • Added special function for post-dating all items to the newest item in the list.
  • Improved the calendar display in the "Set date and time" dialog. There now separate up/down arrows for month and year.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

CoolTerm featured in The Mac Observer

The Mac Observer's "Monday's Mac Gadget" column, which "highlights a compelling piece of Mac software or hardware the editors think their readers would enjoy", features CoolTerm this week.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Freeware Update: Coolterm v1.2.0



What's new:

- Added "Line Mode" to the communication settings. In "Line Mode" a line of typed text will not be sent to the serial port until the Enter key is pressed.
- Added "History" which is available in "Line Mode" the up and down arrow keys can be used to select previously typed lines.
- Added a receive buffer size limit option.
- Added handling of the bell character (ASCII code 7), which can be enabled through the communication settings.
- It is now possible to open the communication settings and edit certain options while the serial port is open.
- The viewer mode (plain or hex) is now saved as parameter in connection settings files.
- The size and position of terminal windows is now saved with connection settings.
- Fixed bug that converted occurrences CR+CR+LF strings to single spaces on Windows.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Governor Schwarzenegger at the Mann Biomedical Park in Sylmar, CA

I saw Arnold today at work. Too bad my cell phone camera sucks.

The video is here:
http://gov.ca.gov/multimedia
Go to the event from 2/1/2010

There are some photos too:
http://gov.ca.gov/photos/14328

Friday, January 08, 2010

New Freeware App: BatchTouch


BatchTouch provides an easy-to-use way to change the creation and/or modification date of multiple files and folders all at once. It offers enough flexibility to the user to choose which type of items to change, whether or not to process the contents of folders, and whether to change the creation date, the modification date, or both. Furthermore, it is possible to change just the time, just the date, or both. It is possible to apply both absolute values as well as offsets to both date and time. I.e. it is possible to add/subtract a specified number of days, hours, minutes or seconds to/from the creation and modification date of any item.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Not "free" as in "beer", but "free" as in "frustrating"

SparkFun is a great resource for geeks and hobbyists who want to get their geek on and build something cool. Just before Thanksgiving 2009, they announced "Free Day" to be held on January 7th, 2010, where everybody can get $100 worth of stuff for free, not to exceed $100,000 altogether. Very cool idea (in theory), and very generous. Not many companies give away 100k just for fun.

Like countless others, I loaded up my shopping cart way ahead of time, and got ready to pull the trigger to check out at exactly 10am MST and get my free stuff and be happy. However, this did not turn out as the good guys at SparkFun had planned. Even on "Free Eve", I noticed the website loading times increasing quite a bit, and the site started to become sluggish. I didn't think much of it at first, but a lot of people must have been loading up their shopping carts the night before.

Of course, when the big moment came, the website didn't load at all. In the 1 hour 45 minutes that "Free Day" lasted, I was able to load a page 3 times. I never even got to log on to my account. The server was hopelessly overloaded, and the whole event, although meant well, turned out to be an epic fail.

In the fine tradition of looking a gift horse in the mouth, numerous people started ranting on Twitter and other sites about the people at SparkFun and announcing that they will never buy from SparkFun again. I'm guessing that these are the same people that would not have bought anything anyway, and that they just showed up for free stuff, just to never return in the future. Get a grip!

What was very frustrating to me is that I never got a chance to see the gift horse because I couldn't even get in the barn (or even close to it). Towards the end it even felt like someone burned the whole barn to the ground. I don't have a problem with getting beaten fair and square, but I feel I never even got a fair shot. I knew there would only be 1,000 lucky winners at the end, but the whole game was skewed towards the people with faster bandwidth and shorter latency. While I really applaud SparkFun for their gesture, there are probably better ways to give away $100,000 worth of stuff.

I'm not upset with SparkFun at all, but in my opinion the whole debacle really sucked. However, I don't hold a grudge, and I will continue to buy from them, starting in the very near future, because I still really need the stuff I had on my shopping list.