I used to be a huge fan of Launchy which is a free cross-platform utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. In my pursuit to always keep my hands on the keyboard it was awesome. However, it lacked some features that would help me with another goal, the no icon desktop.
The one feature that started me down this path was the desire to empty the recycle bin. Launchy has many great features but it didn’t have many system commands, where Executor had many.
System Commands
Here is a list of some of the the system commands that Executor has.
| Command | Description |
| ?shutdown | shutdown windows |
| ?restart | restart windows |
| ?standby | put the computer in standby mode (no warning) if computer / windows version supports it) |
| ?hibernate | hibernate the computer (no warning) if computer / windows version supports it) |
| ?screensaver | start the screensaver |
| ?monitor | turn off the monitor (note only if system/hardware support it). Default keyword is |
| ?emptyrecyclebin | empty recycle bin |
| ?saveclipboard | open a save clipboard to file dialog (works with text and screenshots) |
| control | launches the control panel |
| ip | write your current local IP address, or a comma separated list if machine have more than one IP address |
There are many other built in commands, I just wanted to highlight the ones that really caused me to start using it.
Visual Styles
Like Launchy, Executor offers several visual styles that are achieved via skins.
| Style | Example |
| Minimalistic |  |
| Small |  |
| Medium |  |
Skins
The other way to customize the look and feel is to use a skin. This can be done by either downloading one from the Executor site or creating one yourself and saving it from the Executor settings dialog. I have created one that I use that is minimalistic and clean and works well with my Win7 dark theme.
You an download it here minimal_clean.skn (292.00 bytes). Just drop it in the Executor Skin directory located at \Program Files\Executor\Skins.
Conclusion
If you haven’t tried a utility like this down load one today. I rarely touch the start bar or the mouse any more and my desktop as you expect is icon free 
.
After discovering Windows Live Writer I vowed to never use the online editor for my post again. Recently Microsoft released the Microsoft Live Essentials 2011 which updated the Windows Live Writer by adding the Microsoft Office Ribbon style menus and toolbars which is great.
One thing that has bugged me that I have not found a fix for is that if I am using the Edit view the Title and Text area looks like it is aligned to the right and now matter what I do I cannot get it to align to the right.
As you can see in the image it looks horrible. I have installed it on several computers and they all do the same.
I don’t mind the updates to the Ribbon but this alignment issue will be what causes me to look for a different blog editing solution or go back to posting them via my blogs online editor.
If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know.
UPDATE
This seems to be due to an issue with the Theme detection in Live Writer. I posted my question on Windows Live Solution Center. I got some good ideas but the actual solution was not presented. What it did due was point me to the solution in a round about way. I searched on “Live Writer 2011 Edit with theme” and about half way down the list found this article “How to Delete a Windows Live Writer Blog Theme and Use the Default View Instead” which not only showed the same screen shot issue I was experiencing but walked me through deleting the cached version of my theme so it would use the default. Which by the way worked. So if you are having the same issue here it the solution.
A colleague of mine recently posted to an internal blog a list of helpful utilities. I have been wanting to publish a list of my favorite tools and this was just the motivation I needed to put my list together and make it available. There is a mixture of general tools and some that are specific to programming, but they all work together for me.
I would like to challenge others to also publish a list of their favorite tools.
Get the word out, make someone else's life easier!
Windows Utilities
UltraMon - UltraMon is a utility for multi-monitor systems, designed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of multiple monitors
Launchy - Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
Process Explorer - Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.
Unlocker – A great utility to help when you get that “Cannot delete file, it is being used by another program” message.
Cropper - Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site.
Sizer - Sizer is a freeware utility that allows you to resize any window to an exact, predefined size. This is extremely useful when designing web pages, as it allows you to see how the page will look when viewed at a smaller size. The utility is also handy when compiling screen-shots for documentation, using Sizer allows you to easily maintain the same window size across screen grabs.
KeePass - KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).
Notepad++ - Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence.
ZoomIt - ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations.
Development Tools
I thought I would also share my favorite development frameworks
nHibernate - NHibernate is a port of Hibernate Core for Java to the .NET Framework. It handles persisting plain .NET objects to and from an underlying relational database. Given an XML description of your entities and relationships, NHibernate automatically generates SQL for loading and storing the objects. Optionally, you can describe your mapping metadata with attributes in your source code.
StructureMap - StructureMap is a Dependency Injection framework that can be used to improve the architectural qualities of an object oriented system by reducing the mechanical costs of good design techniques. StructureMap can enable looser coupling between classes and their dependencies, improve the testability of a class structure, and provide generic flexibility mechanisms. Used judiciously, StructureMap can greatly enhance the opportunities for code reuse by minimizing direct coupling between classes and configuration mechanisms.
nUnit - NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit, the current production release, version 2.4, is the fifth major release of this xUnit based unit testing tool for Microsoft .NET. It is written entirely in C# and has been completely redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features, for example custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities. NUnit brings xUnit to all .NET languages.
Rhino.Mocks - A dynamic mock object framework for the .Net platform. It's purpose is to ease testing by allowing the developer to create mock implementations of custom objects and verify the interactions using unit testing.
TestDriven .NET - TestDriven.NET makes it easy to run unit tests with a single click, anywhere in your Visual Studio solutions. It supports all versions of Microsoft Visual Studio and it integrates with the best .NET development tools.
ReSharper - The must-have productivity tool for Visual Studio, ReSharper 4 provides solution-wide error highlighting on the fly, advanced code completion, superior unit testing tools, over 30 advanced code refactorings, multiple handy navigation and search utilities, single-click code formatting and cleanup, automatic code generation and templates, and a lot more productivity features for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, XML, and XAML. ReSharper fully integrates with Visual Studio to intelligently and powerfully extend the functionality that is native to Visual Studio.
TortoiseSVN - TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.
Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.
TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don't need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it.
.NET Reflector - .NET Reflector enables you to easily view, navigate, and search through, the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies, even if you don't have the code for them. With it, you can decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic, and IL.
On June 9, 2008, yes I am behind on this one, Ilya Ryzhenkov announced on the ReSharper Blog, that ReSharper 4.0 has been released. This release includes full support for C# 3.0, lambdas, extension methods, LINQ, object and collection initializers, anonymous types, automatic properties and partial methods. Check out a more complete list on the New Features page.
I have downloaded and installed the this version and am loving the full Visual Studio 2008 integration. The one thing that I might argue about is the implicitly typed locals (“vars”). I haven’t made up my mind on these yet. I will have to re-wire my thinking, since I always think about the old Visual Basic Variant type and shiver.
I still believe that ReSharper is a must have for any developer coding in reverse or using any of the *DD, (TDD, DDD, BDD) styles of development.