Tech Tip – Launchy for Windows

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Launchy Screenshot

I’ve mentioned before that I love keyboard shortcuts. When I’m typing in a Word document, for example, I don’t want to have to move my hand over to the mouse to make something happen. This love for keyboard shortcuts is one of the reasons I really liked the new Start menu in Vista, but I HATED how long it took my laptop to shutdown in Vista, so I’m back to XP only. The one thing that I really missed, though, from Vista was the ease of launching programs in Vista. This is where Launchy comes in.

“Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.” That’s what the website claims. Here’s how it works. A quick keyboard shortcut, in my case Ctrl + Space but I changed it from its default keys, brings up a simple text box in the middle of the screen. Start typing some letters from the program you want to start and it will have a match REALLY FAST!!! For Microsoft Word, I just have to type “wo” and the program chooses Word as the top match so I press Enter. Another great thing is that it learns which programs you prefer, so many times you just have to type in one letter!

Download Launchy (Windows only) from http://www.launchy.net/index.html

Here are some more tips from the site:

  • Search Google
    • Type in google, then tab, then your search query and press enter
  • Check the Weather
    • Type in Weather, then tab, then your zip code or city,state and press enter
  • Search other sites
    • Other sites you can search include wikipedia, msn, yahoo, amazon, netflix, imdb, and more.
  • Browse your computer
    • Type in c:, then tab, then a folder or file, hit tab, and continue
  • The Launchy Calculator
    • Did you know that Launchy has a built in calculator? Type in some algebra and see what happens!

My Switch to Vista

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I’ve been a Windows user since Windows 3.1. I’ve been pretty happy with every upgrade they’ve done to the Operating System, except for Windows ME which should have never seen the light of day. I still have nightmares of the Blue Screen of Death. When Vista was released earlier this year, I was intrigued. I wanted to check it out, but I didn’t want to drop $260 for the upgrade. I had pretty much convinced myself that I was going to switch to Ubuntu Linux or a Mac when I needed to upgrade my laptop some day. That all changed when the school I’m doing my masters work at added Vista to its volume license purchasing. That mean I was able to upgrade to Vista Ultimate for only $18, so I decided to take the plunge.

The computer I use is a Sony Vaio VGN-FE660G, which was certified as Vista ready when I bought it last year, so I didn’t need to run Vista Upgrade Advisor. What I’ve ended up with is a dual-boot system of Vista Ultimate and Ubuntu 7.04. There were some twists and turns along the way, but I must say that now that I’ve been running Vista for over two weeks, I’m very glad I made the switch. I’ll talk about what I like about Vista in another post, but I want to write a walk through of the process I took to make the switch.

Before I began installing Vista, I decided I wanted to have a triple-boot system with Vista Ultimate, XP Pro, and Ubuntu. I also wanted to start with a clean hard drive. The first thing I did was backed up all of my personal files to my external hard drive. I also ran Belarc Advisor, which lists every program you have installed. I did this so I could have a printout of everything that was on my computer just to be sure I didn’t miss anything. Once I was sure that I had everything backed up and knew where my installation cds for the programs I needed to reinstall I started the process.

This website was where I got the info on how to set everything up, so I followed the process outlined there. I partitioned my hard drive using GPartEd on the Ubuntu Live CD. I set up my 93.16GB hard drive with three primary partitions and one extended partition as follows: 30GB as NTFS for Vista, 20GB NTFS for XP, 10GB extended partition for Ubuntu (9GB as ext3 for files, 1GB as linux-swap), and the remaining 33.16GB as FAT32 to keep my personal files in a place that I could read and write in either Windows or Ubuntu.

Once the partitions were setup, the Ubuntu installation process was a breeze. All of my hardware, including my wireless card, worked right off the bat. It found the FAT32 partition and mounted it automatically, which was nice. The one area that is not very clear on the website listed above had to do with backing up the MBR. This section is a little confusing: “After installation is complete, reboot and login. Open the terminal and backup your MBR. You can use sudo fdisk -l to see a list of available partitions and df to see your mount points.” This part works as described, but the next part needs some clarifying. The website instructs you to “Type sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/share/ubuntu.bin bs=512 count=1 to backup GRUB.” The problem with this is that it assumes that you’re using the same type of hardware as they were. My laptop has a SATA hard drive, so the above command would not work for me (I knew that ahead of time, thankfully). In my case, I had to replace “sudo dd if=/dev/hda” with “sudo dd if=/dev/sda” for the command to work. If you’re not sure what kind of drive you have, just run a few searches about your pc on Google before you begin. It’s possible that the instructions written will work as written for you. All in all, I had no complaints or problems installing Ubuntu. Things working great so far! On to installing XP.

XP installs fairly easy as well. You should not attempt this process if you only have a recovery cd from your computer’s manufacturer. These discs will wipe out your entire drive and restore it to exactly what it had on it when it was shipped from the factory. Just be sure that you have an installation CD from Microsoft. If it’s an upgrade CD you will also need a disc of an old version of Windows, so I wouldn’t recommend proceeding without a full installation CD. The website I mentioned above worked exactly as described, so follow the steps listed there as well.

When I got to installing Vista, I had to adapt the instructions just a little bit. Those instructions were written when Vista was still in beta, so they’re not completely accurate anymore. The version of Vista I got was Vista Ultimate Upgrade, which I had thought would mean I would be able to do a “clean install” just like I could do with XP–meaning that I would just have to stick in my XP cd to prove I owned a previous version of Windows. This is not the case. This website spells out the dillemma I faced and gave me the workaround I needed in order to have three fully functional operating systems. The annoying thing that Vista Upgrade does is invalidates your old XP so that you won’t be able to activate it if you ever need to reinstall it. This was not acceptable to me. I didn’t know if I was going to keep Vista or if all of my programs would even work, so I didn’t want to lose the ability to re-install XP if I needed to. Also, I own four versions of XP: XP Home on our desktop, XP Pro on my laptop, XP Media Center (from before I switched to Pro), and an extra copy of XP Pro 64 bit that came with XP Pro when I ordered it from my school. Because of this, I had no problems using this workaround knowing that I have a version of XP that I won’t use, so I’m not violating the license that requires to upgrade from another version of Windows. The annoying part of this process was that I had to install Vista twice, but it worked! I was able to activate Vista Upgrade by “upgrading” from an unactivated version of Vista. Why did Microsoft leave this option open? I have no idea.

Once I had Vista installed, I tried following the instructions listed on the other website, but they didn’t work for me. The solution I found, which ended up being much easier, was EasyBCD. I just downloaded the program and followed the instructions for using it listed on this site. Just make sure you add whatever other operating systems you have on your system using EasyBCD. If you need more specific instructions check out the different guides here.

So my triple-boot setup was complete! I had Vista, XP Pro, and Ubuntu 7.04 all running and accessible from one boot screen. Aside from the things noted above, everything worked fine. In my next post I’ll post my thoughts on Vista and the problem I ran into when I decided to remove XP.

Microsoft Word Keyboard Shortcut: Shift+F5

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I have a new favorite keyboard shortcut. I read about it recently at lifehacker.com and didn’t think that much about it, but I have grown to love it. All you have to do is hold down shift and press F5 at the top of your keyboard. Word will be taken straight to your most recent edit in the page. This is really useful for picking up from where you left off when you open a file or quickly jumping back to where you were if you’ve been scrolling around the document.

Simplifying Communication

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I’ve been considering applying a new rule to every lesson or message I give in the future: the text message rule. My theory is that anything that is worth saying should be able to be summarized short enough to fit in a single text message (144 characters, including spaces). One reason I’ve come up with this theory is that I think text messaging has become so popular partly because it has to be short and to the point, which people like and makes things easier to remember. I’m not saying that we should only communicate in text messages, since my blog posts would have to be much shorter in general, but we should be able to know our material well enough that we could send the main concept in a text message.

Here’s an attempt at summarizing the above applying the txt msg rule:
Everything a person wants to communicate should be able to be summarized in 144 characters or less.
(99 characters)

Google Send to Phone will let you test your summaries.

Word snobs are out of touch with reality.

Kevin1 Comment

I don’t like to use big words that sound intelligent. I understand a lot of them, but they are out of place with my everyday life. Most people today don’t walk around using a graduate-level vocabulary. Just look at your most recent text message. You’re more likely to see things like “cya,” “whatsup,” and “how r u?”. We’re a generation that likes to get to the point.

A news story about new words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary reminded me of my dislike for fancy words and my appreciation for new combinations of words. MW will be adding “ginormous” to its newest dictionary this year (and I have to add it to my Firefox dictionary, too). If you’ve been hiding inside a cave for the past few years, you might not have noticed, but ginormous has become ginormous. I’ve heard it used in everyday conversations, tv shows, movies and more. It makes sense to add it to the dictionary.

Word snobs, like Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, don’t get it. Here is what Mr. Metcalf had to say about ginormous being added: “A new word that stands out and is ostentatious is going to sink like a lead balloon. It might enjoy a fringe existence.” There are two things about his statement that irritate me. First off, he’s implying that a word like ginormous won’t last because of its novelty. That might be true, but it might not. All of our language is basically an evolution from previously existing words, so why wouldn’t a new word stick.

The other thing that bugs me is the fact that he used the word “ostentatious” to talk about a word that would fade away. When was the last time you heard anyone use that word? I had no idea what it meant, so I had to look it up at webster.com. Its definition is “marked by or fond of conspicuous or vainglorious and sometimes pretentious display.” Mr. Metcalf is being pretentious with his vocabulary to degrade a word that he considers to be pretentious.

The fact of the matter is that in order to communicate effectively you have to use language and terminology that your audience is familiar with and is relevant to them. I applaud Merriam-Webster for not living up in ivory towers, but trying to stay in touch with the average English speaking person. This should pay off for them in the long run.

NBA Season Review and Post-Season Predictions

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The time has finally come for the playoffs. It was a spectacular regular season for Dallas and Phoenix fans, but very little drama elsewhere in the league. On this first day of the playoffs, I’d like to take a look back at my pre-season predictions to see how I did.

In the West, I was right about Dallas and Utah winning their divisions, but my seedings were way off. The Nuggets surprised me, which probably had a lot to do with picking up Iverson in the middle of the season. Houston did MUCH better than I expected, as did the Lakers. I got six out of the eight teams in the playoffs right, so at least I was close. In the East, I correctly picked seven of the playoff teams, with Toronto being the surprise team this year. All in all, it wasn’t very hard to pick who would make it.

As for the playoffs, here are my predictions by round:

West, Round 1

1. Dallas vs. 8. Golden State
Dallas wins in 5 games. The regular season will have no bearing on this series whatsoever. Devean George missed the first two games against them and JJ Barea started in the third game. Dallas will be fully prepared to stop whatever Nellie throws at them. They did it against a much better Suns team last year in the playoffs and Dallas has improved a lot since then.

2. Phoenix vs. 7. LA Lakers
Phoenix wins in 5 games. The Suns are better prepared for Kobe and the Lakers limped into the playoffs. No repeat of the drama from last year’s series.

3. San Antonio vs. 6. Denver
San Antonio in 5 games (Notice a trend?). While the Nuggets have two legitimate superstars, they have very little else. The Spurs are playing unbelievable basketball and will only struggle in one game.

4. Utah vs. 5. Houston
Houston in 7 games. This will finally be the year the Tracy McGrady actually gets to feel what it’s like to make it to the second round of the playoffs. Utah is a solid team with a great coach, but they will come up just short in the end.

East, Round 1

1. Detroit vs. 8. Orlando
Detroit wins in 4 games. Orlando doesn’t have enough to compete with the depth of the Pistons.

2. Cleveland vs. 7. Washington
Cleveland wins in 5 games. Washington will find a way to avoid a sweep, but nothing more.

3. Toronto vs. 6. New Jersey
New Jersey wins in 6 games. Toronto is a young team facing an experience New Jersey. The games will be close, but this will be the biggest upset of the first round according to seedings.

4. Miami vs. 5. Chicago
Chicago wins in 7 games. As great as the Heat were at closing out games last playoffs, they won’t do it again this year. With Dwyane Wade hurt and Shaq another year older, Chicago will end up taking the series on their home court in the 7th game.

West Champ: Dallas
East Champ: Detroit
NBA Champ: Dallas

Church, Inc.

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I just started a new class in my quest to get a masters degree from Liberty Theological Seminary on Church Administration. One of this week’s assignments was to take and defend a position on whether or not a church should become incorporated. I figured I’d post my response on my blog as well. Here it is:

I believe that it is in the best interest of every church in the United States, other than those in Virginia and West Virginia since they cannot, to become incorporated as a non-profit organization. The reasons that Schmitt discusses (holding real estate, contracts, bonds, protection of church members against debt, etc.) are ample reason enough, but I can think of two additional reasons.

First, there is a biblical mandate for all Christians to follow the laws and procedures set up by the government. Paul wrote in Romans 13:1, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (ESV). While there is no legal requirement for a church to become incorporated per se, there are certain things that only a non-profit organization can legally do. Thus, in order to remain true to the biblical precept of following the laws of the land, a church should become incorporated.

The other reason that I suggest is a less spiritual one. As Ed Young, Jr. wrote in The Creative Leader, it takes some mad cash to run a church effectively. That being said, most people (Christian or non-Christian) are much more likely to give to non-profit organizations than an unincorporated ministry because of the tax benefits. In particular, members of a church are likely to give more to a church if it will mean they have to give less to Uncle Sam. This sounds very carnal and worldly, but it’s true.

As Christian leaders, we need to constantly be teaching people of the marks of a growing Christian. One of those marks is tithing. Jesus said that we should not do our acts of righteousness to be seen by others. In order to help immature Christians grow in the discipline of tithing, any sort of motivation will help. Also, we should not use the tax benefits as the only or primary motivation to give. However, since the laws of the land allow for tithes and offerings to be tax-deductible, why not take full advantage of this benefit for the members of our churches? Wouldn’t that be considered good stewardship?