Saturday, June 30, 2018

Giving a presentation use Windows Presentation mode in Windows 10

How to use Windows Presentation mode in Windows 10

Ever need to prevent your computer from going to sleeping while do a presentation. Well this built-in windows tool is for you. 

While Windows Presentation mode is enabled it does the following; 

  • prevents laptop form going to sleep
  • system notifications are turned off
  • prevents screen saver from appearing 
  • show a sponsors background image during presentation

Hit Win+R key, and type presentationsettings.exe

OR you can use my handy presentation shortcut tool, and get this in one click.













Background images are from %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Pictures and  
images are from windows themes located here
C:\Windows\Web\...


Friday, June 29, 2018

1-Click Installer for Presenters Desktop Shortcuts Tool for Windows 10 1803 Spring Creators Update


This tool installs a "Presentation Apps" Context-Menu accessible from you Windows Desktop that contains the following handy shortcuts too; 
  • Presentation Settings - set laptop to stay awake, system notifications off, screen saver off
  • Calculator 
  • Control Panel Properties to Mouse, Sound, and Display (to extend it)
  • Magnifier (to zoom in on parts of the screen, during presentation)
  • Snipping Tool (create presentation, capture portions of screen)
  • Problem Steps Recorder - annotate full screen captures 
  • Voice Recorder App - record sound using Window 10 Metro App
  • Screen Recroder - Run Encoder 4 Screen Capture - you must first install Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 with Service Pack 1 (SP2) free version records 10 mins at a time.
  • Window Media Player (play audio and video files)
  • Wordpad (quick annotations while presenting)
  • Zoomit - (new) Systernals Zoomit - zoom and write on screen

This utility has the following features; 

  • works on Windows 10 (and corresponding Server version) 64-bit version only
  • adds link to Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture (must be download and installed separately)
  • add link to Zoomit (must be download and installed separately)
  • comes with proper uninstaller located in "Add or Remove Programs" Programs and Features


Prerequisites (kinda)

  • Download Zoomit and copy to C:\Windows\
  • Download and Install Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 with Service Pack 1 (optional)

    It's free from Microsoft and works on Windows 10+, with one caveat; the free version records only 10 mins at a time.

    NOTE: If you don't install above the Zoomit or Screen Recorder then those link will simply not work.

Install

Prerequisite:  Your user account must be part Administrators group or you know Administrator password to install.
  1. Download and unzip PresentationAppsWin10.zip.
  2. Simply, right-click onPresentationAppsWin10.inf and click Installthat's it.


Uninstall

The great thing about this inf file, is it creates a uninstall option.

Goto Programs and Features, and double-click "Presentation Shortcuts for Desktop Context-Menu (Uninstall only)" to uninstall.





Similar Utilities of Interest


Run/Set Powershell.exe command line as Administrator every time for Windows 10+ with easy installer


Edit in Notepad As Administrator Shortcut to the File Context Menu in Windows 10 1 click installer


1-Click Installer for Presenters Desktop Shortcuts Tool for Windows 10 and Creators Update


1-Click Install for Windows Media Taskbar Mini-Player for Windows 10 and Creators Update (64-bit)


Shutdown, Restart, Log-off, Hibernate, Lock Workstation, Switch User Start Tiles for Windows 8/8.1/10 featuring new Metro Icons

Administrative Tools Metro Tile, Control Panel "God Mode" Metro Tile, Windows Update Metro Tile , Windows Explorer Search Metro Tile for Windows 8.1,10 


Path Too Long Auto Fixer R4 - the only tool that auto corrects long filenames and paths to fit under the 260 character limit



Monday, June 25, 2018

How to remove permissions from a folder in Windows 10

Firstly, you (current logged-in username) have to take “full control” folder in question.

1.Right-click on folder and choose Security tab.



2. Click Advanced and click Change (if your user is not owner)




3. Click Advanced to get next pop-up windows in 4.




4. Click Find Now button to list all current users and groups. Select your username and click Ok button.




5. Choose “Replace owner on subcontainers (folders) and objects (files)” if appropriate. This will make you the owner of all sub-folders and files recursively.


Note: This may take some time to process all the permission changes for a folder with allot of files in it and/or sub-directories. Be patient.



Now that you are owner you can remove permissions.

6. Select Group or user names you want to edit/remove permissions for the choose Edit button.



7. Choose to allow/deny individual permission types in the “Permission for Users” areas. Or completely remove entire group/user choose Remove button.

Click Apply button to process.




8. Fini

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Windows Explorer Bug - Properties shows Incorrect/Wrong File And Folder Counts for Paths Too Long

Yours truly, has found another Windows Explorer bug this time surfaced whilst building my tool the Path Too Long Auto Fixer app. This is still is an issue for the latest build of Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 1803 (10.0.17134.112).

It's well know Windows Explorer, cannot copy paths that are too long, but also it cannot report folder Properties properly for paths that are too long. This was the main motivation behind building the the Path Too Long Auto Fixer tool, to automate the correction of paths that are too long to fit under 260 characters.

The Windows Explorer bug is demonstrated in the image below, there are text files each with a size of 1kb each in the overlimit (folder). The Properties pop-up however indicates a total size 0 bytes and size on disk 0 bytes, which is incorrect.

Furthermore, the counts are incorrect showing that folder overlimit Contains 0 files, 257 folders which is clearly wrong. 
It seems for paths that are too long Windows Explorer is reporting all files as folders.

Windows 10, Size is incorrect, and Contains Files/Folder counts are wrong for paths too long.



























The command line dir command gets file counts correctly. 





Saturday, June 16, 2018

Read aloud an eBook, PDF or Web Page in Windows 10 with Edge Browser


Edge Browser can read aloud eBooks, PDFs and Web Pages in Windows 10.

















Hear it in action 



Here's how you can adjust the reading speed in Edge Browser.




















Here's how you read a The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Iliad of Homer by Homer PDF.







Friday, June 15, 2018

Write Powershell Scripts Faster and easily Explore Windows Management Infrastructure Win32_Classes with WMI Code Creator utility

As a Poweshell developer your number one querying information source is the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), which gives you access to a wealth of management information operations on Windows-based operating systems. But WMI this has been updated to MI.

The Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) features represent the latest version of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) technologies introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 for new ways of creating Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) applications. MI is fully compatible with previous versions of WMI and provides a host of features and benefits that make designing and developing providers and clients easier. The new providers are prefixed with Win32_. 

For example, Win32_ComputerSystem inherits from the old CIM_UnitaryComputerSystem.

Win32 Provider contains 682+ classes, so how to learn about these classes quickly. 

A quick Powershell 1 liner to count Win32 classes
@(gwmi -list | where {$_.__class -match "Win32"}).Count


WMI Code Creator is a free utility from an Microsoft Technet Magazine to do just that.


Download WMI Code Creator (122KB)

Here's the WMI Code Creator GUI and how to explorer the Win32_ providers which lives under namespace "root\CIMv2".






















Want to find out what a specific field formal definition is and means ? 























Once you happy, you can now Generate Code with a Where clause by clicking "Search for Property Values" button and selecting the where value "Manufacturer=LENOVO" to appear in the Generate Code window. 

If this new code does not show up you may have to regenerate the code by selecting Code Language sub-menu with your language selection.





Press Execute Code button to get your results! 


WMI Code Creator  is a amazing toool to save you time writing administrative scripts and code. Koodos to Chris Scoville, the developer and a programming writer in the Windows Server Developer Documentation group at Microsoft.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Both Python and PHP faster on Windows than Mac

In a recent benchmark analysis most notably for Python and PHP from Phoronix.com whic ran system bench-marking tests on the following operating systems: 
  • OpenSUSE
  • MacOS 10.13 High Sierra
  • Fedora Workstation 28 with updates is the Linux 4.16 kernel, GCC 8.1.1, and EXT4
  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with the Linux 4.15 kernel, GCC 7.3.0, and an EXT4 file-system
  • Clear Linux 22780 with the Linux 4.16 kernel, GCC 8.1.1, and EXT4
    Clear Linux is free super optimized Linux build for Intel CPUs by Intel Corp
  • Windows 10 Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) using Ubuntu 18.04 
  • Windows 10 Pro
PHP Benchmark  (bottom is the winner)



Python Benchmark (bottom is the winner)

Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mac-win-linux2018&num=6


Tuesday, June 12, 2018

NDepend - improve code quality and measure total effort

NDepend is a static analysis tool for .NET code that makes life easier for developers. The product comes with a slew of performance metrics to make your code cleaner,  more flexibility, and easier to maintain. Ndepend makes adhering to SOLID Principles easy to measure and communicate. It fully integrates with Visual Studio, but has it's own GUI.

But the number one reason and feature why I would by this product and this product alone is the ability to estimate total work effort (credit) and technical debt. This is essential for any developer to communicate to team and management budgetary requirements. Always a tough task. All developers have been under the gun, and stuck with this repeated question;




"Well how much time is this going to take?" Answer this question easily with NDepend.

Work effort (credit and debt) is bases on the "controversial" measurement of LOC (Line of Code) produced per day. 

LOC is "controversial" 
because is no definite clear picture of how to count number of lines because it depends on the length of code which is hard to measure (compact one liners, vs beautified code) and 
code expressability productivity ratios is different in different languages. 

NDepend mitigates this by using logical LLOC of code instead of a 
physical LOC, which is  independent from the language. Still LOC depends on complexity and functionality. 

NDepend measures complexity in a number of ways; 

NbLinesOfCodeNbLinesOfCommentPercentageCommentNbILInstructionsNbMethodsNbFieldsNbInterfacesImplementedType levelType rank,Afferent coupling at type level (TypeCa)Efferent coupling at type level (TypeCe)Lack of Cohesion Of Methods (LCOM)Lack of Cohesion Of Methods Henderson-Sellers (LCOM HS)Code Source Cyclomatic ComplexityIL Cyclomatic Complexity (ILCC)Size of instanceAssociation Between Class (ABC) Number of Children (NOC)Depth of Inheritance Tree (DIT)PercentageCoverageNbLinesOfCodeCoveredNbLinesOfCodeNotCovered 

to incorporate into a rule-set that best captures your environments complexity and functionality. These rules can be sectioned into grades.

But back to work effort, NDepend measures "Estimated Dev Effort" (credit) the total time the project development effort and "Techinal Debt". "Technical Debt" is the work effort required to fix all issues based on slue of best practice rules for a specific duration. High level  settings for duration/man-time are configurable (see next image below). 


Technical Debt of 33 days to fix all issues for this project completely

NDepend allows to you set your own work effort estimates, based on your project as it stabilizes. 

The default value, out of the gate is 18 man-days which represents an average of 55 new lines of code (LOC), 100% covered by unit-tests, written per day, per developer. 

In NDepend, the setting called "SQALE Debt Ratio".  "SQALE Debt Ratio" is the estimated number of man-days to develop 1,000 logical lines of code setting. This estimated setting also needs to take into account the cost of writing unit-tests.

"
SQALE" is short for Software Quality Assessment based on Lifecycle Expectations is a method to support the evaluation of a software application source code. It is a generic method, independent of the language and source code analysis tools. 






























If you are starting a new project, then the default NDepend  of 55 new lines of code (LOC) per day, per developer maybe bang on as productivity tends to decrease as the project grows larger and team grows. 
Complex programming projects cannot be perfectly partitioned into discrete tasks that can be worked on without communication between the workers and without establishing a set of complex interrelationships between tasks and the workers performing them.

Therefore, assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later. This is because the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project and the increased communication overhead will consume an ever increasing quantity of the calendar time available. When 
n people have to communicate among themselves, as n increases, their output decreases and when it becomes negative the project is delayed further with every person added. The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks

Here are some ballpark starter LOC estimates to get you started; 

Hope you are convinced as I that NDepend tool is worth the buy.


Monday, June 11, 2018

NDepend - improve code quality and measure total effort


NDepend is a static analysis tool for .NET code that makes life easier for developers. The product comes with a slew of performance metrics to make your code cleaner,  more flexibility, and easier to maintain. Ndepend makes adhering to SOLID Principles easy to measure and communicate. It fully integrates with Visual Studio, but has it's own GUI.

But the number one reason and feature why I would by this product and this product alone is the ability to estimate total work effort (credit) and technical debt. This is essential for any developer to communicate to team and management budgetary requirements. Always a tough task. All developers have been under the gun, and stuck with this repeated question;




"Well how much time is this going to take?" Answer this question easily with NDepend.

Work effort (credit and debt) is bases on the "controversial" measurement of LOC (Line of Code) produced per day. 

LOC is "controversial" 
because is no definite clear picture of how to count number of lines because it depends on the length of code which is hard to measure (compact one liners, vs beautified code) and productivity ratios of the code expressability is different in different languages. 
NDepend mitigates this by using logical LOC of code instead of a physical LOC, which is  independent from the language. Still LOC depends on complexity and functionality. 

NDepend measures complexity in a number of ways; 


NbLinesOfCodeNbLinesOfCommentPercentageCommentNbILInstructionsNbMethodsNbFieldsNbInterfacesImplementedType levelType rank,Afferent coupling at type level (TypeCa)Efferent coupling at type level (TypeCe)Lack of Cohesion Of Methods (LCOM)Lack of Cohesion Of Methods Henderson-Sellers (LCOM HS)Code Source Cyclomatic ComplexityIL Cyclomatic Complexity (ILCC)Size of instanceAssociation Between Class (ABC) Number of Children (NOC)Depth of Inheritance Tree (DIT)PercentageCoverageNbLinesOfCodeCoveredNbLinesOfCodeNotCovered 
 

But back to work effort, NDepend measures "Estimated Dev Effort" (credit) the total time the project development effort and "Techinal Debt". "Technical Debt" is the work effort required to fix all issues based on slue of best practice rules for a specific duration.  The rules and duration are configurable (see next image below). 


Technical Debt of 33 days to fix all issues for this project completely

NDepend allows to you set your own work effort estimates, based on your project as it stabilizes. 

The default value, out of the gate is 18 man-days which represents an average of 55 new lines of code (LOC), 100% covered by unit-tests, written per day, per developer. 

In NDepend, the setting called "SQALE Debt Ratio".  
"SQALE Debt Ratio" is the estimated number of man-days to develop 1,000 logical lines of code setting. This estimated setting also needs to take into account the cost of writing unit-tests.

"
SQALE" is short for Software Quality Assessment based on Lifecycle Expectations is a method to support the evaluation of a software application source code. It is a generic method, independent of the language and source code analysis tools.






























If you are starting a new project, then the default NDepend  of 55 new lines of code (LOC) per day, per developer maybe bang on as productivity tends to decrease as the project grows larger and team grows. 
Complex programming projects cannot be perfectly partitioned into discrete tasks that can be worked on without communication between the workers and without establishing a set of complex interrelationships between tasks and the workers performing them.

Therefore, assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later. This is because the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project and the increased communication overhead will consume an ever increasing quantity of the calendar time available. When 
n people have to communicate among themselves, as n increases, their output decreases and when it becomes negative the project is delayed further with every person added. The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks

Here are some ballpark starter LOC estimates to get you started; 

Hope you are convinced as I that NDepend tool is worth the buy.