Dave's Blog

A couple of months ago I was introduced to a piece of software called SlickRun. This is a free advanced command line utility for Windows which works exactly like the standard Windows command line, allowing you to use all standard commands, but also allows you to specify ‘MagicWords’ for certain software or scripts.

An example of a MagicWord I use is ‘word’ which links to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE. Typing this MagicWord will open Microsoft Word for me.

This means that I have no need to have icons on my desktop to access software or directories, I simply assign a MagicWord to everything I need access to. As a result of this, this is what my desktop looks like:

The only icon I have is the Recycle Bin.

Another example of a MagicWord I have assigned is ‘wikipedia’ which will bring up an input box and ask for a search term. When I enter this search term my browser automatically opens and searches for the term in Wikipedia.

Not only does this clean up my desktop, but it also vastly reduces the amount of time (and mouse clicks) required to access something. I like to find as many ways as possible to reduce the time taken to carry out a task and SlickRun really does help.

To input a MagicWord all you have to do is press a hotkey you have assigned, in my case Ctrl + R as this was as close to Win + R (the hotkey to access the Windows command line) that I could get. A box is then displayed which you can type into, and once you start to type it will automatically go to the most recent MagicWord that matches what is input so far. For example, in the screenshot below I have only typed ‘v’ and it realises that I am probably typing in the MagicWord for Visual Studio. In this case the only key presses I needed to open Visual studio were ‘Ctrl + R’, ‘v’ and then the Return key, taking me literally a split-second to access Visual Studio.

If you want to try SlickRun then you can download it here:

http://www.bayden.com/Slickrun/

For years I have created slideshow videos of family events such as birthdays using Ulead Videostudio which was always great and seemed to make some good videos relatively easily. Recently I found out about Animoto and decided to give it a try with photos from a birthday party in December. The results were great and everybody was quite impressed with the video.

It is very easy to use, all you do is upload all the photos and video clips you want to use along with a background track and Animoto will analyse the track then play your photos and videos with transitions to the tempo of the track.

It is a paid for service, but at $25 (it should be $30, but using my referral code qwvalfjy will get $5 off) I find it well worth the money.

I am using it to create some videos to put on the blog so you will get an idea of what it is capable of.