Burning CDs and DVDs in Windows XP… without unusual punishment

Published
by
dtjohnso
on 26 July 2008
in Windows
. 0 Comments

Someday, burning optical media like CDs and DVDs may be a fully supported operating system feature. Until then, Windows users have to use burning software packages that unfortunately tend to bundle complexity and cost with a lot of frustration. Windows XP does support minimal burn operations when blank CDs and DVDs are opened as “writable” windows in My Computer, but this is not enough for creating anything beyond basic data disks.

I have used commercial burn software packages (like Nero and Roxio) before, but I chose not to use these packages again for a few recent projects. Here’s why:

  1. For a home user who rarely (read, almost never) needs to burn media anyway, it is difficult to justify the cost of either package.
  2. Both Nero and Roxio bundle a lot of useless junkware into their packages (perhaps partially to justify their pricetag) and all I need is basic burn functionality.
  3. Removing remnants of an expired “trial” version of either is not a task I relish. I’ve found (and Wikipedia concurs) that even licensed copies of these programs are hard to remove.

With this in mind, I set out to find open source or freeware burn software without needless frills. I was looking for actively developed projects which might continue to be useful in the future. Two programs which do just that are InfraRecorder and ImgBurn.

InfraRecorder is an open-source project, and it supports creating various data and audio CDs and DVDs (at this writing, it is in version 0.45). It does not yet support the creation of video DVDs, but it has a fairly simple interface, and enough basic documentation to help most users. I used it to burn a a large collection of MP3 files to a DVD without any problems.

ImgBurn is freeware, and supports data, audio, and video for CDs, DVDs, HD-DVDs, and  Blu-ray (at this writing, it is in version 2.4.2.0). The interface is very clean and operation is straightforward. I probably like this program better than InfraRecorder because its basic approach appeals to me.

Rather than modeling all its operations like other burning software which combine high-level tasks like “Copy disk” or “Burn data disk” with lower-level processes such as creating a disk image, ImgBurn does everything from a low-level perspective. If you want to copy a disk, you first run the process to create an image file of the original disk, and then you insert a blank disk and burn the image file into the new disk. Although this approach may seem more technical to a new user than a higher-level approach, this approach is so simple (and the tutorials so straightforward) that when I first used it I feared that I was missing some detail simply because it seemed too easy to be true.

Amazingly, with all this simplicity, it really does support a high degree of customization for advanced users. The complexity is accessible, but you don’t have to deal with it unless you seek it out.

I’m glad I finally put some effort into finding burn software for future projects. Both of these are good programs that don’t annoy me in any of the ways the commercial packages did, and hopefully they’ll still be useful as technology and media standards progress. At least for now, these two will probably remain my burn packages of choice.

Clean pastes with Excel VBA

Published
by
dtjohnso
on 14 December 2007
in VBA
. 0 Comments

I’ve talked about some of the Excel VBA I’ve done before, and here’s a new thing I learned today.

Problem

One part of my application selects a range from one worksheet in the spreadsheet and pastes it onto another. Originally, the code I used looked like this:

destinationWorksheet.Range("A2").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste

There is one problem I was unaware of. Every time the .Paste operation executed, it added a new “Named Range” to the ActiveSheet. I only realized this when snooping around in the Properties for the Excel file, where I found (to much dismay) 840 different “Named Ranges” referring to data long since thrown away! An older version of my application, which used this unspecified Paste operation much more frequently, had even more of these attached to numbers of other worksheets. Continue reading ‘Clean pastes with Excel VBA’

Lazy list management

Published
by
dtjohnso
on 12 November 2007
in Linux
. 2 Comments

I use a couple awk scripts to manage a list of students who come to church with me every week. When a student tells me he will be coming on Sunday, I put an asterisk (*) in front of his name in a static text file with everyone’s names. If they tell me they won’t be coming, I put a minus sign (-) in front of their name so I remember that they said so. If for some reason I’m not sure, I put a question mark (?).

My main script spits out a list of all the students who are coming (i.e., have an asterisk). There’s no genius to it, I’m just logging it here for reference.

I also have another script that wipes all the attendance marks out of the main list file. Continue reading ‘Lazy list management’

Producing valid RSS from my XSL Transform

Published
by
dtjohnso
on 11 October 2007
in XML & XSL
. 0 Comments

In a previous post, I showed the XSL transform I designed to transform a simple XML file I use into “(almost) valid RSS.” I called it (almost) valid because of one problem, which I address here.

The problem reviewed

My original XSL assigned an arbitrary ID to each entry in the news file based on its order in the list. What this meant was that the first item received the integer 1 for an ID, the second 2, the third 3, etc. Here it is:

<!--old method, produces invalid link & guid-->
<link><xsl:text>http://www.duncanandmeg.org/news.php#</xsl:text>
  <xsl:value-of select="position()" /></link>
<guid><xsl:text>http://www.duncanandmeg.org/news.php#</xsl:text>
  <xsl:value-of select="position()" /></guid>

This was fine for my original purposes, but since this hardly represented a unique & permanent identifier for each post, it caused some problems when echoed into the RSS <guid> and <link> elements. The significance of the <guid> element in particular is eliminated with such an approach. Every time I added an item to the list (see the previous post for an explanation of my schema), it would be assigned the ID of 1, and the older posts would be assigned the ID numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.

This meant that most RSS aggregators would not detect that a new post had appeared and would not update accordingly.
Continue reading ‘Producing valid RSS from my XSL Transform’

Fixing memory leaks in Excel VBA… (we hope)

Published
by
dtjohnso
on 13 September 2007
in VBA
. 0 Comments

One project I constantly return to is an application I built in Excel VBA that does a lot of different things. One specific problem remains unsolved with this application, so I’ve decided to throw it out here and see if any gurus have an answer.

Basically, as a result of some Excel memory leaks beyond my control (I can’t install recommended hotfixes on the computers where this application is used, and need to be able to handle the issue with/without hotfixes anyway), when I shut down Excel it typically remains stuck in memory (and visible under “Processes” in “Task Manager”) even though it looks like it is gone to the user.

Paranoia

I realize that many would argue that since this bug is Microsoft’s problem and not mine, that I shouldn’t trouble with addressing it. However, since this application I’ve built is something that gets used frequently (but not constantly) throughout the day, I can imagine this becoming a problem (or at least wasting resources) at some point.

Another rejoinder to this charge is quite simple: I’ve actually ignored this issue for about a year now already, and am only revisiting it because I’ve learned some things about VBA that enable me to possibly defeat it. If I didn’t have any hope of fixing this, I wouldn’t try. Continue reading ‘Fixing memory leaks in Excel VBA… (we hope)’