What I Wanted
I was searching for good video capturing software to create a demo video for the game I’ll release soon. Looking for some simple functionality to capture on-screen video and place it to YouTube I thought it will take no more then an hour.
The Reality
However I ended with about three hours spent on this for several reasons:
- First I had a problem recording audio from the game
- Then many tools I tried were creating strangely wrong avi files
Happy End
I finally have it working with BB FlashBack Express like a charm with their function to export to YouTube 
One bonus about it is how nicely it captures WP7 emulator window (with and without frame). No need to position capturing region. Perfect region is one click away with BB FlashBack Express highlighting the window.
Resolving audio recording issue
It turned out that I need to enable so called “Stereo Mix” in sound settings:
- Select “Sound” from the control panel.
- Select the “Recording” tab.
- Right click on the background of the tab and choose “Show disabled devices”.
- Right click on “Stereo Mix” and click “Enable”.
- Right click on “Stereo Mix” and click “Set as Default Device”.
I was surprised when didn’t found “Stereo Mix” it at all. Anyway after some web search and trials I solved this issue by updating sound card driver.
Dealing With Strangely Wrong Avi Files
I couldn’t resolve issue completely, but I found a great workaround. I’m uploading video to YouTube directly from BB FlashBack Express.
After installing TortoiseCVS on Windows 7 icons of folders and files that are under CVS control didn’t change. Which clearly dispappointed me. Some Web browsing and several tries lead me to the proper solution.
To fix the issue you need to rename subkeys under “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers” starting with “Groove” to something that will move them to the bottom of subkeys list (i.e. VGroove).
Recently company I’m working for decided to change internal IM client from Lotus Sametime to Skype. Since I also have personal Skype account I have to run two instances of Skype.
One option was to use command line parameters to start second instance, but it doesn’t work good.
A better way was proposed by a colleague of mine (thanks Bertrand). There is a handy utility called Skype Launcher that does exactly what I want and in a great way.
There is a great free utility to perform disk partitioning called Easeus Partition Master Home Edition which can be downloaded from download.com.
Recently I needed to do some stuff with icons and I found two programs I really liked. Moreover they are absolutely free.
First one is IconsExtract is a program that helps to extract embedded icons from different types of files (EXE, DLL, OCX, CPL).
The other one is Greenfish Icon Editor Pro: a powerful icon, cursor, animation and icon library editor.
Convert.io is a great service for converting documents of many different types to PDF files. I’m using it when I need to read documents in MS Office 2007 format primarily.
It works really simple: just e-mail document to pdf@convert.io and wait a minute to receive PDF version.
TortoiseSVN does not allow save password to SVN. This forces entering it many times during the day. Fortunately there is a workaround and Ditching the Password Prompts in TortoiseSVN explains how.
Last week I found great utility called TrayIt! that allows to hide any applications to tray instead of minimizing to taskbar.
It has very simple interface and works stable. I use it to hide Outlook Express and Lotus Notes.
P.S.
There is also utitlity specially for OutlookExpress (HideOI).
Couple of years ago when I was developing for Windows Mobile devices I used Pocket Controller as remote controller. It costs money but we had licenses for it.
Recently I joined Excitor as WM client developer and had to find freeware alternative to Pocket Controller. I found great application EveryWAN Remote Support. It has free personal edition with the only limitation: device has to be connected to desktop via ActiveSync using USB or Bluetooth. Connection via Wi-Fi is available only in full paid version. It’s OK for development purposes, so EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition is a great replacement of Pocket Controller.
Today I needed to check some code in C++ and decided to use old good Borland C++ 3.11 just because it’s fast to install it.
Unfortunatly I found out that my copy of it died together with my external drive 
I must confess that it was not such an easy thing to find working download link on the web. But I found one at http://www.eni4ever.com/downloads.php?cat_id=1. This page also contains links to some old IDEs for other languages.
Looks like this resource doesn’t contain it anymore. So here is a link to Borland C++ 3.1 in my public folder on SkyDrive.
