Month: January 2014

Dukto: LAN File Transfer

Sharing and sending files over the internet gets easier and more trivial with every passing year. The same is almost true when it comes to sharing files on a local area network, between two computers in a house for example. It is a waste of bandwidth and resources to use the internet for such a case. There are relatively complex solutions for transferring files in a home network, some require the same operating system and others fiddling with permissions and folder share settings. Dukto (version: R6) is one tool that reduces the effort and also happens to be multi-platform.

Dukto does not write to the registry or pollute the system, its Windows, Linux and other versions can be downloaded and just executed.

Just open the program on all installed devices and its discovery protocol should find the others. In most home cases there is nothing else to do but to choose a file, folder, text or clipboard content to send to another computer. There might be times when the discovery might not work and Dukto will attempt an IP connection – the IP address of every device is shown by clicking the bottom middle icon and can be entered manually for IP connection transfers. It is possible to configure where received files are stored by using the bottom right settings icon.

If an error is seen it can be due to a firewall blocking Dukto. The program can be white listed pretty easily, for example in

Windows XP:

Start —> Control Panel –> Windows Firewall, Exceptions tab —> Add Program

Windows 7:

Start —> Control Panel —> Windows Firewall —>Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall, Change Settings and Allow another program buttons

Linux Mint 13 MATE edition:

Menu —> Firewall Configuration. The Firewall is normally disabled when Mint is installed. If it is enabled for any reason Dukto may not work and allowing it will require a firewall that can add application rules and not port or IP address based rules. For example Linux-Firewall.org

Dukto is available for Windows XP and newer, Mac OS 10.6 and newer and via repositories (or manually via deb or rpm files) for use on Linux computers. As tested on Linux Mint 13 the deb file downloaded from http://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home:colomboem&package=dukto was used – simply download and double click to ‘Install package’ and it’s ready to be used.

January 7, 2014
Process Liquidator: Kill Processes With One Click

Process Liquidator is a small utility that pretty much serves one purpose. This is to have have quick access to running processes and if needed terminate them easily.

A right click on a process name terminates it. Process Liquidator displays process name and process id – and by left clicking on a name additional information about the process. Double click on any running process to see its child processes, if any, or click on the Childs button to see all. After clicking on a process name click on the Wins text to list Windows the process has open.

It is docked to the right side of the screen with an option to change docking position, it also auto hides by default and requires hovering the mouse on configurable edges of the screen to re-open. This and other options such as Warn before terminating and are available in the Config section (see images).

Process Liquidator should work on Windows 2000 and newer.

January 5, 2014
Process Piglet: What’s Eating All The RAM?

Process Piglet is a small tool released as part of NANY 2014. It monitors top memory consuming programs and warns of any large changes in RAM usage.

Process Piglet is probably most useful for monitoring browser behaviour. Of course there are programs that by nature require a lot of resources, those written poorly that have memory leaks and others that don’t release memory properly when different tasks are done or the program is closed. The more common culprits, however, are browsers. Also their add-ons and plugins (hint: Flash) are notorious for bringing even relatively powerful computers to their knees.

Process Piglet provides a window showing top memory users. It generates an alert when memory usage for a process changes a lot and offers the user to terminate or restart it. The same plus other options like navigate to folder are available by right clicking the process name in the program window.

The programs settings include an Exclusions option to ignore processes and by default only cares about processes using more than 50MB, this can be changed by right clicking the tray icon then Edit Options —> Memory Options.

Process Piglet should run on Windows versions going back to Windows 2000 and since it is new is evolving quickly.

January 3, 2014
NANY 2014 Is Here
The latest edition of DonationCoder’s New Apps for the New Year is here. The programs shared this year include the following:
- ImgFloat – an app to overlay the desktop with a recently taken screenshot [with Screenshot Captor]
- Q-FlashCards – an Android program for learning (vocabulary, dates, whatever) using virtual flash cards. Perhaps a good option for learning a new language
- Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility – an utility to inspect and manipulate text. Case conversion, encrypt, sort, search and more
- Zeno’s Alarm – lets you set future events, and it will alert you every time you cover half of the remaining duration
- Esc Close – close a program by just pressing the ESC key thrice … even close a tab by pressing ESC key twice.
- epCheck – a tool designed to let you easily track and view TV series data. Data provided by TheTVDB.com
and many more.

The latter retrieves information for just about any tv series for viewing on the desktop. Search, add a series and then view the information downloaded in a list and description format with number of episodes and seasons plus episode dates and summaries. Past and upcoming episodes are presented in a ‘weekly’ tab that can be configured to show X number of past and future days. epCheck also links to the series’ wikipedia page (Series —> wikipedia) and also includes links to various relevant pages on TheTVDB.com
January 1, 2014