Update January 5th, 2013: Version 1.2 is available:
soutien des nouvelles catégories de dépenses, à plusieurs niveaux;
support for new, multi-level expense categories;
sélections du projet, de tâche, des taxes, de catégorie de dépenses sont restaurés au démarrage de la fonction;
selected project, task, taxes, expense category are restored on the start of the app;
FreshBooks introduced multi-level expense categories in September 2012.
They call them "tax-friendly" because they better align with what you would use in tax returns. And it didn't bother me for awhile since I haven't refreshed my settings
(more importantly, it seemingly didn't bother people who actually purchased it from Nokia Store).
That is until Québec introduced changes to the QST for 2013.
At this point Time Tracking was seriously broken - upon refresh of taxes, it displayed all those 66 categories in one long, disorganized list. Version 1.2 fixes that.
Update July 22nd, 2012: Version 1.1 is available:
track your expenses right when you incurred them;
suivi de vos dépenses dès que vous les engagées;
support for new Nokia phones (e.g. Nokia 808 PureView, certain models of Nokia 500, others);
soutien des nouveaux téléphones Nokia (par exemple Nokia 808 PureView, certains modèles de Nokia 500 et autres);
there was an attempt to preserve notes and project selection when a user switches away from the app. The hope is that when the battery is going to die and the phone is going to turn off because of that, the app will get a signal and can save some data. Unfortunately, tests have shown that it may or may not happen. Sorry, folks. Keep your phone charged
Are you a freelancer who bills by hour? Or a small business owner with a team of consultants who bill by hour? If so, do you use FreshBooks? (if not, why not sign up now?)
If you answered "yes" to any of above questions, and you've been disappointed because you could not use their Time Tracking feature on your Nokia smartphone, please, give a warm welcome to Time Tracking for FreshBooks! It is now available from Nokia Store.
S60 5th Edition (like Nokia C6-00), S60 3rd Edition FP2 (like Nokia E72), Symbian^3 (like Nokia C7), Symbian Anna (like Nokia 500) are supported by version 1.0.
Time Tracking est maintenant disponible en français depuis Nokia Store aussi. Malheureusement, le site de FreshBooks n'est pas disponible en français, mais vous pouvez envoyer des factures en français. Si vous avez des questions, s.v.p., envoyez-moi un message.
I've been using FreshBooks for about half a year. And it is quite simple to use, some would even say that it's not flexible enough. And about the only feature I was missing is mobile time tracking widget. Nokia provides Eclipse-based Web Tools, so, I solved my problem. Hopefully, I solved yours along the way
By Kirill (on 2010-11-27 @ 18:54:57, in General, read 8728 times)
As mentioned in Dear NATO, could you please spell it for me?, you can spell any phrase in NATO alphabet. But there was a problem with the gadget - you could not install the accelerator in Internet Explorer 9, although you were warned that you could if you had IE8.
So, it was time to fix it. And the fix was relatively easy (IE9 has "Trident/5.0", instead of expected "Trident/4.0"; and it has been addressed in http://www.ieaddons.com/script/ie8gallery.js). Save, compile with freshly installed Google Web Toolkit 2.1.0, publish... and the gadget does not work at all, does not even appear. Turned out that 2.1.0 works worse than 1.3.8 in IE9 - it throws an exception and stops loading the script. And apparently, it's a known issue - some GWT applications are broken in IE9 with INVALID_CHARACTER exception - with a reasonable explanation. And there is even a proposed solution, which, as far as I can see, will not work (createElement is still called with > and < characters in the argument). So, time to find out which createElement causes us such a pain.
Drum, please... It's a
<BUTTON type="button">
In other words, if you try to create a regular button in your GWT 2.1.0 application, your app will not work in IE9. I guess, apps that do work in IE9 don't use buttons (Huh?)
The fix for the fix was to compile the project with Pretty output (Detailed seems to avoid literal strings all together), find
By Kirill (on 2009-12-13 @ 12:49:00, in Console, read 10604 times)
Well... unless you use Console, I can't help you. But if you do, you may need to upgrade to the latest build. But before you do that, you may want to add this article to your Web Slices. Please, welcome:
Console by Kirill (beta)
Updated on October 21st, 2011
The new, unofficial build 148.2 is now available.
What's new:
Based on the official 148, hence includes cmd-style selection and double-click to select a word
Per-tab colors map
For those, who would like to use different colors in different tabs, as a M&M commercial says: "Your final wish has been granted". Now if you want to change colors in all your tabs, you would go to Edit > Settings > Console and change the map. But if you want to use a different tint of red for your Git tab, you can: in Edit > Settings > Tabs, select the tab you want to change and go to the Colors tab (that's a lot of tabs for one sentence). The story started when I read Scott Hanselman's blog post about the Console. I value Scott's opinion a lot, and that post meant a lot to me. There was also a discussion about word selection, which is available since the official 148. And then somebody mentioned Zenburn color scheme for Console available from Brian Reiter. I gave that scheme a try and generally liked it, but somehow it seemed a bit too dark for my Git tab. So, it was time to help myself and others.
Have you been waiting for cmd-style selection for awhile? If your wait was not about rectangular selection, I think you'll love the new build. With some settings tweaking, you can make it work almost like in cmd.exe: double-left-click (Hotkeys > Mouse > Select text assigned to Left) to select a word, left click anywhere if the wrong word was selected, left-drag to select some other text, right click (Hotkeys > Mouse > Copy/clear selection assigned to Right) *anywhere* (Behavrior > Position-sensitive copy unchecked) to copy, right click one more time to paste (Hotkeys > Mouse > Paste text assigned to Right). Note: double-click will select a word as if the visible part was the whole thing. In other words, if your "word" extends past the visible portion of Console, the invisible portion will not be selected. You can download custom console.xml that is configured to mimic cmd.
Here is a list of 147.6 builds (zip files are a bit bigger this time because they include updated help file):
Updated on April 23rd, 2011
The new, unofficial build 147.4 is now available.
What's new:
Unblocking help file when Console was installed by extracting from an archive. Thanks to Elias for making me read the doc :)
-safe command line switch to make sure that Console starts
The full command line support when reusing the previous instance
The installer
Did you play with settings a bit too much and now the Console does not start even without any arguments? Did you like alpha-transparency so much that you set it at 255 and now you can't see it? Finally, you can start console -safe and see fully opaque window with the default command processor (or cmd.exe if you don't have one). Now... go and change your settings!
As noted couple times in the forum, if one downloads the binary archive and extracts it, the Help will not show any content. The reason, as explained in the forum, is that downloaded archives are marked as "unsafe", and when they're extracted all files are marked as "unsafe", and the help viewer does not want to display anything from an unsafe CHM. The solution turned out to be simple.
In November 2010, the -reuse swith was added to support reusing the Console instance, but back then I was lazy and supported only -t arguments [because that's all I needed for Jump List support]. But people were unhappy, so, the 147.4 passes the whole command line to the previous instance. Obviously, -c "config.xml" and -safe args are ignored.
And I'd like to reassure those, curious about what happened to 147.3 build, that I do know how to count :) It's just the -safe switch was not safe enough.
"Almost" is because I haven't included the required files to support running Win32 shells on x64 platforms because it's way too unstable.
Single-instance is activated by -reuse switch. Only one reusable instance is supported. The second instance, launched with -reuse, will honor only -t "TabName" switches.
Updated on February 12, 2010
The new, unofficial build 146.1 is now available, thanks to Phillip Foose for multiple patches, GrayNM for an inspiring patch, and SRobertJames for his push for the newer build.
What's new:
Updated on January 23, 2010
Thanks to Jason, the link to the x64 build is now fixed.
Source news: the sources for my builds are slowly appearing on GitHub
While this web slice is new [to me], updates may come every 2880 minutes (i.e. every other day).
Note: don't forget to copy console.xml from the official distribution. And if you download the full package, don't forget to copy it to both folders - one copy next to console.exe and one copy next to x64\console.exe
Small note about the "better fix". The official version, in my humble opinion, does not fix all possible hangs. But the unofficial build should never hang on Windows 7.
И немного о русской версии. Я внимательно посмотрел все исправления, предложенные ya158 еще в июле 2009. Но, по-моему, некоторые из них выглядят хуже, чем наши с Виталием. Поэтому, в моей версии использовано "лучшее из лучшего". Отдельное спасибо, ya158, за Подчеркивания в диалоге настроек! Кроме этого, некоторые очепятки были исправлены по ходу дела.
Somebody, extremely curious and suspicious, may ask "Why have you formatted this article as a web slice? Who needs all those troubles? Are you going to take over my browser?" And the answer is unbelievably unprofessional: for no reason; I do; no, I don't. But it's so easy. And Nancy Strickland
described them so nicely in a web course that I thought "why not?"
Another reason is that I'd like to make this article a permanent source of new versions of Console. And now "you can keep up with frequently updated sites directly from the new Favorites Bar", of course, if you have Internet Explorer 8. It's not that I'm going to re-build Console frequently - there are other things in life, not necessarily better, but definitely time-consuming - but, at least, you can easily see when that happened.
Another anticipated question is "What's the purpose of the combined package? And how do you detect whether I'm running on 64-bit Windows?" The first question is simple: the purpose is to "mitigate" the fact that Console cannot see certain files. Of course, as explained in that forum thread, 32-bit Console can't see certain 64-bit files by design, and I'm not going to fight that. But how many people can actually say which version of Windows they're running? Unless you read this article this far, you probably can't. Oh! Wait! You did read it this far, so you may consider the reasoning flowed. But what if you want to put Console on a USB or U3 drive (not that the combined package is U3-compatible)? You'll need to have two different versions and manually choose which one to load. Instead you can just grab the combined package and let Console decide which version will run on the system du jour better.
The second question is plainly interesting. I'm not going to pretend that America was discovered by yours truly. Instead you can read two great articles:
By Kirill (on 2009-05-12 @ 03:49:05, in General, read 9384 times)
Have you ever listened to your travel agent when she was talking to the airline, confirming your flight? I have. Did you wonder how can she remember all those Alfa-Bravo-Charlie? I did.
If you haven't and didn't, but are interested in Google Web Toolkit or Microsoft OpenService Accelerators, or just want to play with cool-but-mostly-useless-gadget, keep reading.
So, after struggling to memorize that useful way of spelling, I finally had decided to help myself by writing a small utility to spell any text travel-agent-style. Well... it turned out that it's better known as NATO Phonetic Alphabet, "more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet".
Problem #1 was which language to choose. How about Google Web Toolkit? You write piece of Java code, compile and get fully functional JavaScript. You can even use Eclipse debugger if the first version is not "fully" functional.
Problem #2 was the task seemed rather boring. But few days later I learned about Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators. Let me tell you: Microsoft did not come up with such a brilliant idea for a very long time (since about .NET 3.5 :)
And here is the result of combining dev tools from Google and Microsoft technologies! Please, welcome "Translate to NATO Alphabet" gadget and an accelerator:
Please enter a phrase:
If you wonder whether you can have the source or just install this gadget on your own site or blog, you'll have to wait until the next update to this article.
By Kirill (on 2009-01-29 @ 01:51:43, in Console, read 8462 times)
If you don't like background images but can't survive without alpha blending, this article is not for you.
Following a discussion about 64-bit build on the Console's forum and a friendly reminder from Marko about still-broken Console on x64 platforms, I've finally got anxious enough to get a new build out
Differences from the official Build 142 include:
64-bit build Note: there is no real danger of downloading this version and trying it in your version of Windows XP or Windows Vista, but if you don't have a version that ends with "x64" you will get an error message "Console is not valid Win32 application", which is true by the way
alpha blending is always disabled
The whole point of this build is to ask people with real x64 versions to assess what's better: no images or no alpha blending.
Additional processing of environment variables as described in Bug 2093153
All the changes of 138.3, в том числе русская локализация.
So, if you feel adventurous, please, give my first (at least, in public) x64 application: Console 2.0.142.0 a shot.
Special thanks to Marko for continuing improvements to the great project, to Ronald "Ron" Blaschke for the first x64 build and Tomas Restrepo for saving me trouble to document another workaround for 64-bit alpha blending troubles.
Updated March 8th, 2009
Following the great success of my x64 build and immense popular demand (both of which are totally in my imagination), please, welcome Unofficial Console 2.0.142 for 32-bit systems by yours truly.
Features are the same as in the x64 build, except that Alpha Blending is enabled on 32-bit colors displays (which qualifies this version even for aesthetes, ClearType-lovers and Consolas font users, e.g. yours truly :)
Версия включает поддержку локализации новых настроек из официального релиза (а именно "Stop scrolling"). Как обычно, Ваши комментарии и предложения на OS zone будут приняты с благодарностью.
And your comments in English are more than welcome on SourceForge forum. For other localizations, please, take a look at [ 2542522 ] Other languages in the project's feature requests.
By Kirill (on 2008-01-19 @ 19:04:08, in General, read 8676 times)
For those of you, who's interested in those "unofficial" builds и для тех, кто предпочитает руссифицированную версию: Console 2.00 Beta, unofficial build 138.
(yet another) attempt at fixing text repainting; (еще одна) попытка исправить перерисовку текста
"самые полезные команды" в системном меню; "Most useful items" in the system menu
zoom in/out with Ctrl+Mouse Wheel; изменение размера шрифта Ctrl+Колесико
fully localizable; полностью локализуемая
Please, send your feedback to the forum on SourceForge. Пожалуйста, присылайте свои предложения на OS zone.
Updated on February 9th
A newer build is now available. It contains: (a) OLE drag-and-drop, which allows you to drop My Documents or a text snippet to the Console window; (b) attempt to improve resizing and dual-monitor support when Snap to edges is active.
By Kirill (on 2007-12-28 @ 08:13:16, in General, read 8010 times)
If you liked the idea, discussed in the original article, you'll love to hear this. Have you tried Console 2.00.133? Have you noticed that sometimes when you open another tab, it comes up either completely blank or with some garbage characters? It's now gone! Finally! Well... at least, Marko and I hope for that very much.
But... the bigger news is Console is now fully localizable, и вполне сносно говорит по-русски. If you don't yet speak Russian, please, Read More. По крайней мере, я очень старался и надеюсь, что перевод, предлагаемый Вашему вниманию ниже, будет лучше, чем у Altavista или у Online-переводчика PROMT (попробуйте перевести фразу "Windows application has a tray icon" на world.altavista.com или translate.ru и сравните с "У Windows-приложения есть значок в области уведомлений").
Как и в прошлый раз, версия, предлагаемая Вашему вниманию, является неофициальной. Все "заплатки", реализующие новые функции доступны на Sourceforge, но еще не интегрированы в официальные исходники. Отличия от Console 2.00 Beta, build 137:
Говорит по-русски
Если у Вас русская версия Windows, то при запуске весь интерфейс будет русским. Если по какой-то причине этого не произошло, то можно установить переменную окружения LANG=ru и попробовать еще раз.
Если Вам не понравился наш с Виталием перевод, то можно установить LANG=en, и Console проигнорирует язык Windows
Наиболее используемые пункты меню добавлены в системное меню (то, которое, открывается если щелкнуть на иконку в заголовке окна, оно же доступно по Alt+Пробел)
Этой заплатки нет еще на Sourceforge - все никак не дойдут руки
Размер шрифта можно менять с помощью мышиного колесика
Новый размер сохраняется до выхода из программы или до открытия диалога настроек
As the last time, I decided to produce an unofficial build. The differences from the official Console 2.00 Beta, build 137:
Fully localizable, Russian is included
You want to try? Set an environment variable LANG=ru
Most useful menu items are added to the system menu, accessible by clicking the icon in the window title or with Alt+Space shortcut
Support for Ctrl+Mouse Wheel to temporarily change the font size
The new font size is not saved permanently and will be lost on exit or on opening the Settings... dialog
Settings, used by yours truly, if you want You will need to rename the file to just "console.xml".
Again, this is unofficial build. Do not ask Marko about the build. But if you're interested in any of the above features, please, feel free to chime in in the feature requests [ 1692653 ] Strings to resources (aka i18n, aka l10n) or [ 1733641 ] Hotkey to resize fonts
By Kirill (on 2007-12-22 @ 12:37:55, in General, read 10330 times)
Well... If you are not going to tell me, then my congratulations! Just don't fall into the same trap as people at London's Waterloo Station and at least pretend that you don't like chocolate.
Seriously, the real title should be "How do you pronounce your password?".
It all started some time ago (in 2001 to be precise). It was a middle of Internet bubble and all kinds of companies offered all kinds of services for free. The problem was (no, not that it ended few months later) they all required passwords. So, what? Can't I just reuse the same password? Well, no, this is a very bad idea even if the password is very strong. Can't I just use browser's capabilities to remember my passwords? Well, no, it's just as bad idea as the previous one. So, the solution I found was: pronounceable passwords. Some may say that even better solution is pass phrases, but up until nowadays not every company would allow you to use funny, catchy, not-so-evident, but 30 characters long password. What is even worse is that some companies enforce weak passwords (no, it's not a typo - they do limit your password to something like 6 lowercase letters and numbers, but no special symbols or even capital letters).
The best implementation I found was written by Tom Van Vleck. If you would go to his Tools & Java section, you'll find a very educational story about how it all started in 1970s (it's on Java version of Pronounceable passwords)
What I did not liked about that password generator is that I had to come up with ways to make the password stronger. There are few ways to do that:
Capitalize some letters
Add digits at random locations
Add non-alphanumeric characters
So, instead of doing it manually each time I need yet another password, I modified his Java code to do it for me [and learned some more Java along the way]. I even had a web site where I published it (however I forgot the credentials to that free hosting provider, which, by the way, disappeared later).
A recent conversation at the office brought the idea of publishing my version of Pronounceable Password Generator back to life again. After some minor modifications (caused by slightly better Java skills), please, welcome GPW 2007 Edition!
If you have Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and JavaScript is enabled, you should not need to "activate" the applet. Otherwise, blame Eolas.
Feel free to download source code (it's actually .java file) or JAR version for offline use from command line.
Some tips to use the generator (you may call them "good password tips"):
generate as long passwords as you can remember
capitalize some letters
use digits
use non-alphanumeric characters
one way to do that is to type digits with Shift key pressed; another way is to use N'th key among non-alphanumeric keys, for example, number each key in the sequence "`-=[]\;',." and when generator says "m2ighw5a" type "m=ighw\a"
if you're a Windows user, you may not know that your password is actually limited to 14 characters, case-insensitive and stored as two passwords 7-characters long each, hence
make sure that your password is at least 8 characters long and each half contains some special (non-lowercase-letter) symbol Yes, I know, it may not be true since about Windows 2000 in a corporate (domain) environment. But even then, it may still be true.
if you need an all-digits PIN, you can specify an alphabet as 22233344455566677778889999 and then spend some time trying to find how to pronounce it
And one last thing. Do not write down your passwords ever! If you have one [thousand] too many passwords to remember, like yours truly, get yourself a password manager. What's the best one? Oh, that's another story... One idea is to use your cell phone.
By Kirill (on 2007-01-12 @ 22:05:54, in General, read 10660 times)
No, I'm not talking about a safe in a bank. I'm talking about Safe 1.27 by KeyCriteria on Motorola RAZR v3i with iTunes.
It all began one morning (or night). I was exploring my new cell phone and found a password manager in Games & Apps. The first thing this midlet did, after I accepted the license agreement, is asked for a password and a hint. I entered somewhat easy-to-remember word and quit the app. The second time I tried to open Safe, it asked me for the password and oops... I could not type it in. Most likely, when I entered the password the first time I did not pay enough attention to what is really happening - remember, one button on phone's keyboard represents several letters (and if you have iTap or T9...) The help screen of the Safe kindly informed me that I can't reset the password. So, here I was... with a brand new phone, at least one function of which is inaccessible.
So, this morning I decided to deal with the issue. There are two ways: just remove the application (throw away the safe, see step 7 below) and forget about it; or try to find a way to fix it. After very short search, Geoffrey Sy's notepad shed some light on how to do the latter. However, I found the instructions to be not precise enough for general public, given that yours truly, who considers himself "computer- and gadget-literate", spent most of the afternoon trying to follow them. Hence, this is my version [to save you installing and uninstalling Motorola USB drivers, UID Extraction tool and Mobile Phone Tools].
Now, for those, concerned with warranty and making a light-weight paper weight from your phone. The below procedure does not void anything, as far as I can tell, and is very safe, provided:
you do NOT play with settings (there are a lot of them in the Manager);
you do NOT try to use your phone while saving or restoring the Safe (you might want to enable unconditional forwarding of all calls to your voice mail, charge the phone, even though it's supposed to be charging when connected to the computer, and press Hang Up button several time before connecting to the computer);
your phone is supported by the Manager (v3i with iTunes is).
And as usual, I can not be held liable for any damages to your computer or any of your property caused by or in connection with this instructions, even if you advise me on a possibility of such a damage.
Install the phone drivers on your computer if you haven't done so already. I guess you can use Motorola USB Driver, but I had drivers installed so the rest worked for me even after I uninstalled the package.
Update December 3rd: the main site is in Russian, but Alexander kindly allowed me to host a translated mirror.
Special thanks to Alexander for not requiring to install the fine application [and having its icons all over the desktop, Start menu, Quick Launch, Add & Remove Programs, My Documents, his documents and all other seemingly unrelated to cell phones places].
Connect your phone to the computer with the USB cable
If you do it the first time, some driver installation might happen.
Run the Moto MIDlets Manager. Important: you have to run it as Administrator, otherwise it will not detect your phone.
If you are not sure what "run as Administrator" means, here is a quick checklist:
if you got a computer with Windows XP and never went to User Accounts, you're ok;
if you connected the phone to the computer, some installation happened, but the Manager does not recognize your phone, you are likely not ok;
if you can't change Date and Time, you are not ok;
After Moto MIDlets Manager detects your phone - and the status changes to "connected" - you will see the applets, installed on your phone, on the Phone memory tab. That's where your Safe is likely located. If not, try to find it on Trans-Flash tab.
Save the Safe applet to your hard drive (I assume that even an average "general public" can figure that out, thanks to Alexander).
Disconnect your phone from the computer, go to Games & Apps in the menu, select Safe, go to the menu and Delete it. You will need to confirm that you want to delete the app and its data [which is useless anyway].
Note that you can do it from MIDlets Manager, but I prefer to use standard tools.
Connect your phone to the computer. MIDlets Manager will rediscover your phone and show you installed applets. Hopefully, Safe will not be among them.
Do not go to the Games & Apps. Stay on the home screen (you can even press Hang Up button several times to be sure). Now you can install JAD file of the Safe.
Restart the phone. If you try to close the Manager, you will be reminded to restart any way.
That's it. You've just got a new safe! Be Safe!
Thank you, Geoffrey! Thank you, Alexander!
Just to let you know that if you don't have an account on MotoDev and don't plan to develop anything for Motorola phones, you might find BugMeNot very useful.
By Kirill (on 2007-11-10 @ 21:01:58, in General, read 9806 times)
Federal Government
Head of State: the representative of the Queen for all Canada
is the Governor General: Michaëlle Jean
Head of government in power: the Prime Minister is Stephen Harper
The party in power is Conservative Party
The leader of the opposition is Stéphane Dion
The official opposition is Liberal Party
The other opposition parties and leaders are Bloc Québécois (Gilles Duceppe), New Democratic Party (Jack Layton)
My member of Parliament (MP) in Ottawa is Maka Kotto (Bloc Québécois)
My federal electoral district is Saint-Lambert (Quebec)
Provincial Government
Head of State: the representative of the Queen for my province is the Lieutenant
Governor: Lise Thibault
Head of the government: the Premier is Jean Charest
The provincial party in power is Qubec Liberal Party
The provincial opposition parties and leaders are Action démocratique du Québec (Mario Dumont), Parti québécois (Pauline Marois), Parti vert du Québec (Scott McKay), Québec solidaire (Régent Séguin)
My provincial representative is Marie Malavoy (Parti québécois)
Municipal Government
The name of the municipality where I live is Ville de Longueuil
The head of the municipal government (mayor or reeve) is Claude Gladu