One of the customizations I did when I switched back to Windows was to find the best way to access my ext3 partitions. I already knew about explore2fs, a nice explorer-like ext2/ext3 browser, which lets you copy files from your Linux to your Windows partitions.

What I was looking for was a way to natively access my files (I have most of my reggae cds ripped as mp3 on my Linux partitions at home and at work), so I tried a few drivers and finally settled for ext2fsd as it's the only one that worked on my system. I've been using it for the past week and it works very very well.

To set it up, download the latest ext2fsd release (0.10), extract it somewhere, enter the Ext2Fsd\Setup folder, run setup and install the .inf file. To mount your partitions, use mount.exe in Ext2Fsd\Mount.

I copied mount.exe in %SYSTEMROOT%\windows32 (usually c:\windows\system32), and linked to my Start Menu Startup folder a .cmd file containing these two lines:

net start ext2fsd
mount 0 2 h:

where 0 is the first ide disk and 2 is its second partition. Easy.

Not much traffic here lately. I've been away to Cambridge (MA) for a while, then got back and had to work pretty hard since I have new projects to manage at work.

The new projects are all Windows-based, so I had to reinstall XP on my office desktop. After many months of using only Linux both at the office and at home, I was suprised by Windows speed, especially in dealing with local files. Of course it's not hard to be faster than Nautilus, and in Linux I almost never use a graphical filemanager anyway, but it was a pleasant surprise.

After reinstalling Windows I spent some time trying to beautify my desktop. One of the things I have always envyed OSX is its wonderful panel, and after digging around for a while I found ObjectDock which is a really great piece of software. It emulates the Mac OSX panel in Windows, and can be used as a Windows toolbar replacement. There are lots of icons, skins, and docklets (clocks, system monitors, etc.) available from wincustomize, more docklets from YZdocklets, and a C++ SDK if you feel like developing your own docklets. Definitely recommended.

I will slowly migrate my bookmarks (currently scattered on at least 3 machines at work and at home) to this site, even though I'm still undecided about how to do it. One possible option is a new category type for bookmarks, whose entries are not displayed in the front page/RSS feeds, but which can accommodate folders. We'll see.

In the meantime, I will transfer from time to time useful links from my old site (they're stored in a MySQL DB, things would -- ahem -- be much easier if they were in ascii files).

Here's tonight's batch, in no particular order:

• ELM (Multiple Boot Manager) a tiny, useful Japanese bookmark manager that reads the partition table and allows you to boot any valid partition on the disk, very handy when you totally mess up things =)
• WinMerge and (better, IMHO) ExamDiff, Windows visual diff tools
• StrokeIt mouse gestures for Windows, pretty nice if you're into this sort of things

After 9 years of going back and forth from Windows to Linux with brief periods on various commercial Unices, a few months ago I finally managed to get rid of Windows (thanks to Slackware, which I unfortunately overlooked for a loong time), so these links are the first to go, and will slowly be buried at the bottom of my archives. =)

One of the things that prevented me from switching to Linux full-time as my desktop os was the lack of a good all-around editor. I know VI (vim) and even like it but I just am not productive enough with it, and Emacs has always scared me and I never got around to learn it properly.

I tried Jedit for a while, but it feels too slow and Javish, tried Komodo from ActiveState (I even bought a license) but it's even slower and crash-prone. Tried a number of Python IDEs like BlackAdder or WingIde but they feel clunky or use qt which I don't like (I do not have KDE installed so it's a waste to load qt just for my editor, and moreover qt has bad fonts defaults -- I am VERY picky about fonts, my eyes are pretty sensitive to blurred/antialiased/badly designed fonts).

Then I read somewhere a comparison of Open Source Java editors where J came out pretty well, and decided to give it a try. I installed it and was instantly surprised by its user interface and speed, in contrast to Jedit which feels sluggish and bloated even on fast machines. So I fiddled a bit with the props file, played with J a while then forgot about it. About one month ago I started a new Python project here at work, and started using J as my main editor. Day by day I discovered some amazing features of this powerful, lean editor like CVS integration, ssh editing and directory navigation, HTML browsing of files, XML tree navigation, and many others.

Now I can't live without it. It's my default editor and I suspect that, as soon as its email and news features are completed, it will be my email client as well. Not only is J a great editor, but it's lead developer Peter Graves is a very kind person and dedicates lots of his time to improving J (he is now working on J's own Lisp interpreter) and resolving the few minor bugs posted on the devel list.

If you're not an Emacs or VI only guy, give J a try.

update: I post my j configuration here, mainly so that I can retrieve when I'm working around on a new computer:

globalKeyMap=/home/ludo/.j/globalkeys
PhpMode.keyMap=/home/ludo/.j/PhpKeys
XmlMode.keyMap=/home/ludo/.j/XmlKeys
restrictCaret = true
autoNewline=false
autoSelectLine=false
dirSortDirectoriesFirst=true
enableExperimentalFeatures=true
highlightBrackets=true
highlightMatchingBracket=true
HtmlMode.upperCaseTagNames=false
showLineNumbers=true
sortBufferList=true
StatusBar.displayLineCount=true
StatusBar.displayLineSeparator=true
tabWidth=4
wrapCol=72
dialogFontName=verdana
dialogfontsize=11
gutterFontName=andale mono
gutterFontSize=8
textFieldFontName=andale mono
textFieldFontSize=11
style.comment=0
autoSelectLine=false
# mail preferences
enableExperimentalFeatures = true
enableMail = true
# Default "From" address information.
userFullName = Ludovico Magnocavallo
userMailAddress = ludo_at_asiatica.org
# The SMTP server to be used for sending mail.
smtp = zzz.zzz.zzz
inbox = {zzzzzz@zzz.zzz.zzz}inbox
bcc = ludo_at_asiatica.org