Little Big Tomatoes

Popularity: 15% [?]

QiiNinja v.0.3.9.1 is out now. I recently switched from ClickOnce based deployment to .msi (Windows Installer and WiX) based installation and this release is focused on making the .msi installer working better. The short list of the changes:

• Changed .msi to detect prerequisites, such as .NET Framework v.20
• Changed .msi to add shortcut for QiiNinja in start menu.
• Changed .msi to launch QiiNinja during the installation.
• Changed .msi to add QiiNinja to the list of the auto starting application at system startup.
• Fixed smaller cosmetic issue on the UI.

Unfortunately, the .msi installer is not perfect yet. When the installer is launched on a computer, where QiiNinja is already installed the following error message is displayed:

Another version of this product is already installed. Installation of this version cannot continue. To configure or remove the existing version of this product, use Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel.

I still could not figure out what is the root behind this message, but I am working on it. Until then, the only workaround is to remove the old version first and then install the new one. 

Popularity: 72% [?]

Today is my last day at Microsoft. I spent four years in PSS and developer support. I did work in the Visual Studio team and later in the Windows Media team in EMEA. I really enjoyed my time there and I did learn a ton and met really cool and smart guys. I am hoping that the friendships will not fade as time goes by.

After 4 yours I felt that it is time to move on and try something new. I will join a very small company and will get back to coding. Although, I am really looking forward to do and create new things, I am sad too.

I love this company! A lot …

Popularity: 44% [?]

The new generation Zune is out and it seems to be generating some buzz. I tried only the new Zune client, and it looks really nice. I am using iTunes as my primary application for doing music and podcast, but lately it became very bloated and slow. Who knows, I might switch from iTunes to Zune. If they would let me to use the subscription service in outside the US as well, then I would definitely switch from iPod to Zune.

• “The [new Zune] touchpad works like a dream, letting you scroll through long horizontal and vertical lists–it may be the first portable player interface from a company other than Apple that’s an improvement on the original iPod clickwheel.”- Matt Rosoff, C|Net
• “Microsoft’s answer to iTunes….is quite attractive and makes iTunes seem like a big, boring spreadsheet” - Tim Gideon, PCMagazine
• "The upgraded Zune Marketplace promises to be the real draw to the new Zune."- Mark Hopkins, Mashable
• "The possibilities are endless with Zune Social…Using the site, music lovers can discover new music and artists and labels can promote their work."- Nick Paschal, ComputingNews
• “Zune Originals will blow you away: Microsoft is actually out-cooling Apple.”- Charlie Sorrel, WIRED

Popularity: 44% [?]

About 2 months ago I posted an article about the low information diet. This is the follow up on how this little exercise went. When I started the diet, I decided that I wasn’t going to do anything that would distract me from doing my pre-planned tasks. I felt that it would be an interesting little exercise, something to do just for fun!

This exercise was definitely an eye-opener for me. It helped me to understand that I spend an awful lot of time doing stuff that results in little or no value. Feeling exhausted and uncomfortable when thinking back to how the day just passed, another day gone by and I did not achieve anything! Once I started to live by the rules, I noticed something weird. I had time and I got work done! I read books and actually finished them, instead of putting them down after reading 20-50 pages or just not touching them at all.

Another important thing was that I realized that I used these time-consuming tasks to postpone important tasks, to fill it up my time and make me look busy. When I had to write an important email, or do something that would move me out from my comfort zone, I always felt that I had to choose between the important stuff and the easy stuff. Of course, I did pick the easy ones 9 out of 10 times - "Reading the latest Micro ISV Digest or some other random article will do no harm."

But this time around, there was no straying off to read blog posts or browse the web, so that after a while, I had to force myself to do the important stuff and after a while I figured out that they are not that hard, and they can be done in no time. At the end of the day I felt that I had achieved something. This was a good feeling!

I also had a free day scheduled. Every Saturday, I would allow myself to do all the stuff that I couldn’t do during the week. I could finish reading every single web site and blog in about 2 hours on that day and it was just as much fun, but definitely taking less time than checking them twice a day. I guess batching works with blog reading, too!

After two weeks, I slowly slipped backed into my old habits, but I started to think about my tasks and their importance, and sometimes I can force myself to stop doing the easy things and start doing the hard ones! And this is promising, right? There is hope even for me!

Popularity: 48% [?]

QiiNinja v.0.3.8.2 has been released today. I added some new features. Now it is possible to control Windows Media Player and iTunes. The new actions are Play/Pause, Next Song, Previous Song, Volume Down, Volume Up and Mute. And as always there are some bug fixed.

QiiNinja Release History

Popularity: 65% [?]

QiiNinja is the tool I use in my work every day to launch and find applications and web pages quickly. It started out of frustration as I was spending more and more time trying to find things in my start menu on my Windows machine. I thought it would be nice to have a tool that would let me start things faster, so I can finish earlier. I started to write this tool in .NET and C# (I feel I need to mention this since I am a computer a geek), got to the working prototype in no time and I felt that this was really helping me.

Then I saw Quicksilver and it was love at first sight. I have never ever experienced something as seamless as this, never ever thought that an application could have had this great of an impact on my daily life. It was a Zen-like moment for me! It even made me to buy an iMac - purchase I will never regret - so I can get to know Quicksilver better. And while I am not hooked on OS X and the rest of the Mac things - I proudly run Windows on my machine - this perfect bond between me and Quicksilver has remained ever since. I thought that I needed to turn this tool of mine into something similar to Quicksilver, so I could experience the "act without doing" on Windows, too!

And here I am trying to fix a bug a day and add one more feature to QiiNinja, so it will be better and better each day, and in the meantime I am learning things that I would never have learnt without it.

This is an amazing journey for me and I am not quite where I want to be yet, but I am slowly getting there. It’s the tool I use every day.

Give it a try, and any feedback, positive or negative, would be appreciated.

Popularity: 78% [?]

I am working a full-time job, and doing QiiNinja in my free time, which means that I only have about 2 hours each in the morning to work on QiiNinja, the web site and the blog. After that, I get to the office and work another 8 hours to earn my money. This is like 10 hours work! If only I weren’t so horrible at doing one thing for longer than 10 minutes. Email, web sites, rss feeds and friendly colleagues are always finding me and I am easily distracted from my tasks, only to find out at the end of the day that I didn’t accomplish half of what I wanted to.   

I am now reading a book called 4-Hour Workweek from Timothy Ferris and this is a great book. I am not usually into these i-got-rich-quick-i-show-you-how-i-did-it kinds of books, but this one seems to offer solutions for my problems and make my life easier. One of the concepts introduced here is called "Low Information Diet". It’s about how to break down the flow of information that comes to you. Web sites, newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television deliver so much unnecessary and unwanted information. While you are consuming information in large quantities, at the same time information is consuming your attention and time and I realized early on that my most precious resource is time itself. 

I read hundreds of rss feeds daily, but I cannot really think of anything useful I gathered from them in the last week or so. I listen to dozens of podcasts and while I do really enjoy them, sometimes I feel that I am obliged to listen to them, so I will keep up with the episodes. When I start my browser, it opens up several tabs with search engines, news sites and forums. It is basically begging me to stop doing what I am doing, and start browsing…

So, I decided that I will try to fix my attention deficit and I am going to try the "Low Information Diet" for a week and see how this goes. The first thing that came to mind is to replace my homepages with one single page. My home page looks like this right now:

Low Information Diet - 5-day trial.

Rules
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks or non-music radio.
No news websites, blogs or rss feeds.
No television at all except 1 hour pleasure viewing each evening.
No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction pleasure reading prior to bed.
No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day.
No email checking, but only in the permitted hours: 12:00 AM and 4:00PM

Permitted websites
LBT Project Page and blog
Work related tools

I copied the rules from the book, so whenever I open up my browser, It will remind me what I can and cannot do. When I was trying to loose weight, I taped the rules of my diet along with my weight graph onto the fridge door, and it helped me to say no whenever I wanted to get some unauthorized snacks. I also created a section of the permitted web sites on this new home page. I will use this as my starting point for any kind of web activity. I have only work and project related sites and tools in this section that I use to do my work.

I will stick to these rules over the next 5 days and will see how it goes!

Popularity: 68% [?]

QiiNinja v0.3.8 is out. This version can do web searches now and ithas some bug fixes.

Download QiiNinja.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Every blog seems to have this, so I decided to keep it! More to follow soon….

Popularity: 51% [?]