April 2013 – MuchTall.com

Muchtall Window Arranger (Save Window Positions and Size)

Over the years, I've noticed that there's one "drawback" to multiple heads/screens on a laptop workstation. I get in the habit of arranging my workspace how I like it, where eventually I have 8-10 windows in positions I would prefer to be permanent whenever I hook up my external 2 heads. When I undock, of course everything collapses back to my main display. When I re-dock, the windows remain in a cluttered pile on my main screen. In addition to this, changes in resolution can result in windows needing to be re-sized as well.

I've found one or two utilities over the years that have allowed me to save window positions and sizes, but nothing that handled it for me as automatically as I would have liked. So I wrote my own in AutoHotKey: the Muchtall Window Arranger.

It's fairly simple, yet powerful if you want it to be. Since it's written in AutoHotKey, you can write custom filters to apply to your window rules (assuming you know AHK). But, for the casual user, it simply grabs the active window information and allows you to alter the conditions that apply to the window matching before saving those settings.

Downloadfrom GitHub: Muchtall Window Arranger
You must have AutoHotKey installed before using this script.

There's one setting in the source you'll probably want to modify before you get started. The variable "NumberOfScreens = 3" should be changed to the number of heads you want to have activate the auto-rearrange feature. If this is set to something higher than you'd ever have installed (say 10), the auto-rearrange feature should never activate. Since version 20200817, you no longer need to specify the number of screens. Instead, the script automatically detects the current screen layout, and generates separate profiles for them!

Screenshots:
Task Tray Menu

Capture/Save window settings

I'll probably clean up the rough edges as I get feedback on it. I know there may be some use for features like re-arranging for multiple head settings, so there's work to be done.

Edit: Moved code to GitHub repo

Brewblog: Kickoff w/ Northern Brewer Nut Brown Ale

My wonderful wife got me a Northern Brewer Deluxe Brewing Starter Kit (Glass) a couple of Christmases ago, and I've been slowly expanding my "brewery" ever since. I've made maybe 6 batches of beer using the kit. One of which I royally messed up (NB Bavarian Hefeweizen) when I scorched the malt in my newly-keggle-fied boiling vessel (on high heat of course).

So far, here's my inventory of equipment:

Northern Brewer Deluxe Starter Kit:
- 6 Gallon Primary Fermentor (Glass), Fermometer, Bung, Airlock, Blowoff Assembly
- 5 Gallon Secondary Fermentor (Glass), Fermometer, Bung, Airlock
- 6.5 Gallon Bottling Bucket, Bottling Spigot, Bottle Filler, Bottling Tubing
- Auto-Siphon, Siphon Tubing
- Beer Bottle Brush, Bottle Capper
- Carboy Brush

I also had a few pieces of equipment from my prior homebrewing adventures of years past:
- Another bottle-capper
- Another 5 gallon secondary glass fermentor
- Airlock (from a Mr. Beer kit)
- One of those common orange dual-vent carboy caps
- ~3 Gallon stainless steel kettle (w/glass lid that I interchange with the keggle below)

And a few new acquisitions and creations:
- 15 gallon boiling "keggle", modified from an old stainless Miller keg (inherited)
- 10lb. CO2 canister w/ regulator
- 4 ball-lock corny kegs
- 1 set of ball lock inlet/outlet tubing, "foam-free" faucet, and connections (I can tap one keg at a time)
- 4 Perlick 545PC Flow Control Faucets (Xmas gift from Santa/Father-in-Law)
- ~7.x cu ft. Freezer (from grandmother-in-law)
- Johnson Controls A419 Temperature Controller (to convert freezer into kegerator)
- Bayou Classic SP10 High-Pressure Outdoor Gas Cooker
- ~20' counter-flow chiller w/partial convolution (see: http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/homebrewing/wort_chiller/)
- ~2' stainless steel spoon
- 2 reusable hop bags
- Yet-to-be-finished ~56qt mash tun cooler (still have to cut slots in my manifold, otherwise done)

Anyhow, I expect to be posting updates on future brewing exploits, so to kick it off, here's my 6th-ish brew: the Northern Brewer Nut Brown Ale (extract kit). This is video I took of the fermentation just a mere 24 hours after directly pitching dry yeast into the wort. Not bad I think, considering that Danstar recommends prepping the yeast before pitching it.

Yum.

Vitals:
Brewed: 4/14
OG: 1.050
FG: 1.012
ABV: 4.9%
Kegged: 5/21

Quick Tip: Identifying Space Consumption in Linux via Command line

Firstly, let me strongly recommend JDiskReport if a GUI is available to you. It's super easy to use and helps you quickly drill down into the disk and identify disk space usage, on any platform with Java support.

In lieu of that, if you have need to identify disk usage via the command line, run this set of commands:
find / -exec du -ks {} \; 2> /dev/null | sort -n | awk '{printf $1 "\t"; if (system("test -d \""$2"\"")) { print $2 } else { print $2 "/" } }' | tail -1000

This will spit out a list of the largest 1000 individual files and folder sums, sorted by size.

Depending on the size of the disk, this will take a while, as should be expected as it runs a "du" for each path it finds. Caching helps if/when you re-run this.