Launchy, You Broke My Heart

I have a confession to make. I accused the remote system administration tools at my work of regularly monopolizing the system resources every 10 minutes.

As it turns out, it was actually one of my favorite programs, Launchy. It seems that the default configuration for Launchy to rebuild its catalogue is 10 minutes. That is to say that Launchy will read a whole lot of files every 10 minutes. I believe that doing that was overwhelming my system to the point where it became unresponsive.

Part/all of this is my fault. I configured the catalog to point to some directories that contained lots of files. As a result, the catalog consisted of over 2000 entries. That's probably outside the boundaries for which Launchy was designed.

The way I worked around this hurdle is to set the catalogue rebuilding to manual. Another alternative is to define the scope of the catalogue to a reduced area.

Even after crushing my system performance. I forgive Launchy. It is an awesome tool.

Launchy Trick

Launchy is one of the first programs I install on a computer when I start using it. It's very useful.

Here's a trick I use to make life easier. I create a shortcuts directory, usually C:\shortcuts\, and put shortcuts to shared directories, web pages, and useful documents in that directory. I then add that directory to my list of directories in Launchy. 

For example, if I have a web application with a qa instance on the following server, http://es5a229tq/appname:8054, I'm probably not going to be able to remember all the values, especially if it isn't something that is fresh. I can set a bookmark in a browser. That's an option. But I can create a shortcut that links to that URL and give it a meaningful name, e.g., AppName QA, that's it. ALT + Shift a few letters and I'm looking at my app with the name that I gave it. It doesn't matter that someone gave the resource a name that consists of a bunch of consonants and numerals, I can give it a meaningful name to me. That's very handy.

Now if I need to get to the project directory that's off on the shared drive I can do it quickly without having to dig for it.

If I were still working at an old employer that kept every useful and useless document on their M:\ Drive, I'd try to do this trick to keep from having to go navigate that abomination of a directory structure.

To make adding shortcuts to your shortcut directory easy, why not add a shortcut to the shortcut directory in the shortcut directory. To open it it's + s and you've got it.

Favorite Tools: Launchy

The unprivileged among us who do not yet have our own Macintosh computers have long envied the Macintoshed few who are able to fire up an application(via Quicksilver) with just a few keystrokes instead of having to:

1. put your hand on the mouse
2. locate the cursor
3. hit the start button
4. go to programs
5. find the folder that the program is in
6. click on the program

whereas the Macintoshians are able to magically get some little window to appear and then type a few letters and their app shows up. GRRRR!!.! I swear every time I see Nate Schutta give a presentation where he can pull up whatever application and pull off a demo whenever he wants with absolutely no effort whatsoever it makes me furious with rage.

Ok, I'm exaggerating, but Quicksilver's a pretty cool program that was enjoyed by few.

Launchy does the same thing. Launchy works on Windows. Launchy works on Linux. Launchy is open sourced. Launchy is free. What could be cooler?

Load up Launchy and you will be ing your applications open.