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FreeMind: a very excellent and cheap mindmapping tool

FreeMind: a very excellent and cheap mindmapping tool

Another thing I learnt at the Speed Reading course I took recently was the use of Mind Maps to help study and prepare notes.

The presenter showed off ActionOutline as their preferred tool to brainstorm and plan. I had already been using OneNote to do a similiar thing but OneNote is too bulky to have running in the background (and lacks any vector line drawing) and ActionOutline was too simple (I feel I could hobble together something similiar in VS2005 in a short space of time – FreeOutline anyone?).

FreeMind is the middle ground, it allows you to quickly create notes and text. You can embed html, text and images and you can export your maps as html & svg so others can access them. It has calendaring attached to notes (like ActionOutline) and you can attach icons to those items. You can also import from a variety of sources, handy if you’re migrating from another mindmapping tool.

There are so many features so go and try it out. Best of all it’s an open source project (ie IT’S FREE AND WILL STAY THAT WAY – I’ll bloody develop the thing if the existing developers get bought out 😉 ) It also runs on Windows, Linux and Mac so you’ve got no excuse.

It’s still a very young product (only up to version 0.8~). There can be some clumsiness in getting it to run initially. The documentation (yes, its a mindmap too), is easy to navigate and search, but obviously still needs a little more work

Here are some tips that can help you get accustomed to the product:

  • The start menu shortcut (and corresponding .exe file) would not start the product for me in Windows. There is an included freemind.bat file in the program directory (C:Program FilesFreeMind) that will launch it for you. You can change the start menu shortcut to use freemind.bat instead of freemind.exe.
  • It’s a java app. (suprisingly fast UI though!) You need Java 1.4 or up installed AND your java.exe for that version needs to be in your PATH variable. Some users have multiple versions of Java installed on their machines (some programs like Oracle database include an older version not compatible with FreeMind). See here for more info on setting this up.
  • When you add nodes to the root node, they take turns at appearing on the right side or left side. If you want to move a child from one side of the root to the other, drag the node over the top of the root node. The node will be highlighted and you can drop it on the left or right side to dictate what side you want that branch on (the highlighting on the root node will reflect the choice you are about to make)
  • You can use Anti-Aliased text if you have version 1.5 of Java installed. Edit the Freemind.bat file and place a -Dswing.aatext=true before the last parameter. It’s not too flash though.
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Lateralus Tour New York 2002


Whilst watching this concert on Google Video (thanks to hellboy’s Fourth Eye site for picking this up), I noticed the backdrop of the stage looking similar to the 10,000 Days cover. Yes, its work done by Alex Grey?, but now I want to find out more about it…

http://www.fourtheye.net/?page_id=237

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Yoga Nidra

http://www.yogapoint.com/Courses/Course7/yoganidra/ses1_ind.htm

After attending a speed reading course recently, I was given a meditation CD titled “yoganidra”.

I found it much like hypnotherapy, except much less reliance on you to imagine things and more focus on relaxing your body in a step by step method. Admitedly it was late and I was tired when I tried it, but I pretty much conked out in the first 10 minutes and awoke to the bit which says “you can now wake up to a concious state. You have now finished Yoga Nidra.” Much like the hypnotherapy stuff I’ve used in the past.

I’ve had various people tell me how hypnosis is similiar to yoga and meditation so I guess this just proves, its the same thing with two different names.

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10,000 Days to go

http://www.toolband.com/


Ok, so its not that long until Tool’s next album gets released here.

Although dates vary, according to Sanity, the release is Monday 1st May…. 30 days to go 😀

Being a Tool fan(atic) I can’t believe I took such a long time to post this, but there are so many other good sites devoted to them which update regularly, that if you were a said Tool nut, you would already have known and visited them many times since the album announcement.

… and after the CD there is the tour, rumoured to be sometime in August……… faaaaaaarrrrrrkkkk!!@#$@!@#$#!@!@#$#!!!!!

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Two Desktop Search Tools are better than one

Previously I’ve been tossing up between a few desktop search tools. Google’s Desktop Search sidebar and rss collection features kept me on it for a long time. Unfortunately, the performance hit on the system was too much for my liking. Using Systernals Filemon tool, I found it would constantly make reads from the disk. Sometimes it would begin indexing even though I was still using my machine. It would also take about half a minute to stop indexing when I returned to my machine, and due to the constant hard disk access, would make it difficult to start new apps or switch between running ones while the indexing was finishing up.

I had been using Copernic at work and found it a reasonable alternative. It boasts speed of response and returns the ‘dont index while on batteries’ feature that I missed when I switched from MSN Desktop Search. It can’t be extended through plugins in the same way GDS or even MSN can, but its fast. I’m not too certain if Copernic has picked up, every email, or every reference in each document, the GDS results seemed a little more relevant, in the order of 0.01%, but because of the speed and responsiveness returned to my system, as well as the free disk space (smaller index files) it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Though this critique could be down to the UI of Copernic, it’s a windows application, again fast, but I’m still used to GDS (again, this used-to ness will probably fade as I use Copernic more.)

Realising that desktop search tools allow you to specify what files you want to index, I simply installed Copernic on my laptop, alongside GDS. I disabled most of GDS filetypes such that it would only index Web History. I got Copernic to do everything else (even index Onenote’s .one files as text files) except index the history from Firefox and IE. I then deleted the index file using TweakGDS which freed a couple gig of HD and let copernic take over.

Best of all, my system runs better than when I had GDS alone. Copernic satisfies my desktop search needs, and I’ve got the excellent sidebar and web clips tool that google provides – and its still picking up rss feeds and popping them up from new sites I visit, as it always has.

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O p u s D ä i

O p u s D ä i is a much hyped band that I heard about through streetwise. They are being compared to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Mars Volta and even Tool. Whilst I don’t hear the reference to the former, they are being plugged as the next progressive thing and they are beginning to catch on with me too.
To hear some of their stuff go to this link at Download.com for 3 free tracks. Their myspace page also has an extra track that is streamable. Get into it, it’s free :-S

For the moment,http://www.decoymusic.com/are streaming the new album too. Now you too can see if they are better than Linkin Park or not 😛

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C++ Compilation and Linking

Taken from Monash CSSE’s 3400 Application Development with C++ webpage:

Firstly, with the normal compile and link process:
We write our programs in a file in a source language that the compiler understands (can parse). If we write code the compiler does not understand it tells us with compile error messages. If we write code that it can understand but that could have problems we get warning messages.

After the compiler has understood our code it generates machine instructions that, when executed, will do what the compiler understands we wanted the computer to do. The instructions could be native machine code or assembler (in which case the assembler is then translated (assembled) to machine code), even another programming language. The machine code often has references to data or functions in other files, such as other parts of our program or the standard libraries.

The result of compiling our source code file is an “object” file.

As already mentioned, the object files refer to other object files or libraries. Also, the various object
files and library functions must be organised into one file that the operating system can load into memory and execute. So the various object files are loaded into memory and all of the references mentioned earlier must be “fixed up” so that the actual address of the referenced data or function is used in the machine instructions. The libraries are also searched for the functions our code calls, and those functions are also loaded into the new program. Not surprisingly this process is called “linking”, and the program that does it is called the “link editor”.

If the link editor finds references but cannot find what they refer to, it reports these as errors.

The result of linking is an executable file.

OK, so where do C++ templates fit in?

When the compiler encounters a template declaration (it should be all together in a header file), it just parses it to ensure it is correct, and stores it until our code makes use of it. When we declare or define a class that uses (instantiates) it, the compiler generates the new class. This could lead to new compile errors. Then the linker will try to link our program and it may find errors too.

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Java SerialVersionUID

I’ve always heard other people complain about serialisation issues, but never had to deal with them myself until now.

Here are some quick links:

java.net: (Not So) Stupid Questions 8: serialVersionUID – the discussion that led me to find these other links.

Object Serialization – a great intro to the classes involved in the Serialization process and some means to implement versioning and backward compatibility. It uses a worked example based on an app the author wrote themselves.

Practical Guidelines for Java Serial Version ID and Serialization – covers the use of serialver tool to generate serialUID’s for your classes.

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Groovy – Home

Groovy – Home

Groovy is a cut down java language intended for beginners, web developers or anyone who wants to quickly write apps or scripts that work on a JVM. It can run in an interpreted or a compiled mode and is more script friendly.