If this is the first time you heard about it then I am telling you that in my opinion, it is a very good software considering that it’s free.

The interface is good and the 3D rendering is done in real time, so every time you put an object such as furniture, doors, wall colors, room size, and even the roof, the 3D window will update it immediately.

The standard furniture included in the Sweet Home 3D setup package are enough for you to design a good looking home but furniture and other objects can also be downloaded from the internet. It’s fun, you should try it :)

The painful part when finding a new FTP Client is when I need to test-run it on my machine to choose the most suitable one since I don’t fully rely on screenshots and online descriptions. My requirements are:

• It should give me an easy ways to browse both local files and remote files. It means that the local file browser and the remote file browser should be accessible on a single window (split arrangement is preferred) and it should be placed close to each other so I can easily drag files between them.
• It should have transfer queue feature, real time debug information to monitor each process, a reporting feature such as failed transfer report, a good account manager to save my existing accounts.
• and of course it have to be FREE :D

There are so many of them available on the net. Free FTP Client key phrase with your search engine will give you a list. I tested some of them including CoreFTP, GoFTP, WinSCP, FileZilla and FireFTP. All of them perform good with the basic function but the last two are my favourite since they met the requirements I need. Let’s talk a bit about them,

FireFTP Client

It’s not a stand alone FTP Client but it’s a Mozilla Firefox add-on originally created by Mime ?uvalo, this gives me a lightweight impression when using it, but it works like the other stand alone one. You can get it for free from it’s official website. Once installed it is accessible via Firefox’s [Tools] menu. Fire FTP has several features such as Search/Filter, Sync Directories and Sub Directories. A bit surprised from it when I can’t see my .htaccess file on the server but it’s because files with a period in front of them like .htaccess are considered ‘hidden’ in the FTP world. To display these files go to Tools->Options->Show Hidden Files.

FileZilla FTP Client

I found this before on 2005 but it was not like what I see today. I got surprised with the development. It’s far more complete now. FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. Although it needs a window for each connection since it does not provide a tabbed style interface, it supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB (I haven’t had time to test it) and the Account Manager is cool - love it :) It is also available in many languages.

Kantaris can play almost anything you can throw at it: AVI, MPEG, MGEG-AVC, WMV, MOV, MKV, quicktime, matroska, divx, xvid, H264, MP3, WMA, OGG files and more.

Kantaris can also play DVDs and audio CDs. The player also displays some of the most beautiful music visualizations ever seen. All this is completely free.

I am not good in digital music requirements but I guess the quality of digital music depends on many factors such as the quality of source file, the soundcard, the speaker including the placement and the software player itself.

I am now using Realtek HD Audio Soundcard - it’s an OnBoard card on my GigaByte mainboard, a GigaByte software mixer, and a tiny low-end 2.1 Camac Speaker.

I have been testing those combination with several payers including WinAmp, Windows Media Player, AShampoo Media Player and Kantaris Media Player. If you ask me which one is the best according to my ears, I choose Kantaris Media Player.

Why? Because acoording to me, the combination of GigaByte Mixer Features and Kantaris Equalizer - with that speaker, I know it’s not that good - can produce the sound of music that I really like. A relatively clear sound which doesn’t necessarily need to be loud but when I hear it I can differentiate the bass, the middle and the treble in a clean shape/form with a solid mixing so almost every detail can be heard.

I play the file, in this case an mp3 file using the software combination of Kantaris’ Equalizer Preset called “Clear”, GigaByte’s Equalizer Preset called “Rock” and GigaByte’s Environment Effect called “Carpeted Hallway”. It sounds pretty good, at least with my ears :D

Interested to test it yourself? You can visit Kantaris Homepage to download it. Kantaris is completely free! No hidden fees, spyware or adware.

All I need is to check whether my program is not forgetting to free any DB connection instances when it is terminated and this TCPView for windows give me what I need.

Using TCPView

When you start TCPView it will enumerate all active TCP and UDP endpoints, resolving all IP addresses to their domain name versions. You can use a toolbar button or menu item to toggle the display of resolved names. On Windows NT, 2000 and XP systems TCPView shows the name of the process that owns each endpoint.

By default, TCPView updates every second, but you can use the View|Update Speed menu item to change the rate. Endpoints that change state from one update to the next are highlighted in yellow; those that are deleted are shown in red, and new endpoints are shown in green.

You can close established TCP/IP connections (those labeled with a state of ESTABLISHED) by selecting File|Close Connections, or by right-clicking on a connection and choosing Close Connections from the resulting context menu.

If you want to see who owns the domain registered for a remote address, select the item containing the name and choose Whois from the context menu or the File menu. You can save TCPView’s output window to a file using the Save menu item.

Available Download

• Download TCPView For Windows

CodeSnippet Plugin is a code highlighter plugin powered by the GeSHi engine. A large number of languages are supported and it can be easily extended. These are the supported languages mentioned on its readme file:

actionscript-french, actionscript, ada, apache, applescript, asm, asp, bash, caddcl, cadlisp, c_mac, c, cpp, csharp, css-gen, css, delphi, diff, div, dos, d, eiffel, freebasic, gml, html4strict, ini, inno, java, javascript, lisp, lua, matlab, mpasm, nsis, objc, oobas, oracle8, pascal, perl, php-brief, php, python, qbasic, sdlbasic, smarty, sql, vbnet, vb, vhdl, visualfoxpro, xml.

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Following is an example of c code formatted with the plugin:

CodeSnippet is class based so you can use it anywhere you want by creating the instance of the class. You can find the example here.

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