Tag: utility

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Beyond Compare Utility

Beyond Compare is, for me, one of those essential utilities I cannot live without. I have used it for years to manage the marking in my classroom as well as for managing backups of files at home.

Beyond Compare is, as the name implies, a program for comparing files.

This screen shows how I use it for marking. The panel on the left is the handin folder where students submit their assignments. The panel on the right is where I copy the files to after they have been marked. At the top you’ll see that I am using the “All” view so I can clearly see all submissions. Any folder or file with a coloured icon is something I haven’t marked yet. The greyed out icon are the folders or files that have been copied over. (Student names have been blurred out) Continue reading “Beyond Compare Utility”

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Popup HTML Generator

I recently had some discussions about updating a webpage to include popups for a number of organizations that were listed on a page. It got me thinking about how I could write a program that would efficiently generate the HTML instead of having to manually code it.

I’ve also been thinking lately about getting back into programming with Delphi, a language I used many years ago that is perfect for quickly creating little utilities.

Here’s the result:

Popup HTML Generator

It’s nothing fancy, but it will suit my needs should the task come up again.

If you’re interested in downloading the program for yourself, it can be downloaded from here. Because it’s written in Delphi, there’s no setup required and the program should run portably on most systems (Windows only).  Just save it to the folder you’d like to run it from, like your desktop.

If you’re interested in the source code, shoot me an email and I’d be glad to  share it.

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Article: How (and why) to use Google Photos on your iPhone or iPad

Article source: https://goo.gl/OyllG4

Installing Google Photos on your mobile device is a recommendation I make to all my students.

If you take pictures with your smartphone, it’s silly not to use Google Photos. At a minimum, it serves as a safe backup for all your photos, at no cost to you. A bonus is that Google Photos creates cool content of some of your images, including instagram-stylized photos, animations, and collages. Continue reading “Article: How (and why) to use Google Photos on your iPhone or iPad”

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How to “Clean” a Flash Drive, SD Card, or Internal Drive to Fix Partition and Capacity Problems

The instructions on this site were invaluable to help me fix a USB drive that had multiple partitions and was no longer usable in Windows.

If your USB flash drive, SD card, or another drive isn’t working quite right, “cleaning” the drive and removing its partitions is one possible solution. This can fix problems with a drive that can’t be formatted or one that shows the wrong capacity.

Source: How to “Clean” a Flash Drive, SD Card, or Internal Drive to Fix Partition and Capacity Problems

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HandBrake News: Version 1.0.0 Released

This has always been my go-to program for converting DVDs or video files to MP4. I’m glad to see it’s finally graduated to version 1.0!

“After more than 13 years of development, the HandBrake Team is delighted to present HandBrake 1.0.0. Thank you to all of our many contributors over the years for making HandBrake what it is today. We again remind everyone that the HandBrake website is the only official source for HandBrake. Downloads are not mirrored on any third-party services, excepting the Linux PPA. For more information on downloading and installing HandBrake safely, please read Where to get HandBrake.”

Source: HandBrake: News