Aerofoil 1.3 - Aero Disabler / Laptop Battery Saver (Final Version)

In response to the positive feedback I received I've put together a final version of Aerofoil - I won't be adding any more new features simply because the majority of people wanted me to keep it a simple one purpose utility. To briefly recap what this program does - it disables Vista Aero Glass when your Microsoft Vista laptop is running on battery. Ordinarily Vista would do this for you but only when using the "Power Saver" scheme but not in any other power schemes. You can also enable/disable Glass manually from the notify icon.

UPDATE: Smaller faster 1.4.5 version available here


This version

• Has a bumped version number - 1.3 better reflects code maturity over 0.1.3


• Uses a fixed tool window (so it no longer shows in shows in Alt-tab)


• Simplifies the code (just a tiny bit more code reuse - I don't think it can get any better!)


• Includes fully commented source code

Remember you need Vista Premium or better to use this (Vista Basic for obvious reasons won't work).

Download Aerofoil 1.3 here
GPL source code here

Gesture Magic - the new name for Smoke Gestures

After 2 years of development (okay I've been lazy and haven't worked most of it) Gesture Magic (the new name for Smoke Gestures) is nearing completion and reaching the alpha development stage.

What is Gesture Magic?

Computer games such as EA's Black and White use an innovative system to "cast spells" - you draw a symbol using the mouse and it will execute spell.
Gesture Magic is one step further - it allows you to paint your own smoke/paint trail on your desktop, and using your pre-defined gesture actions, it can execute or run a specified action.

Why would you want to draw a symbol (a gesture) using the mouse to do something rather than the conventional way of just opening a program via double click etcetera?

Gesture Magic only aims to supplement your existing way of working - typically if it is quicker to click an explorer icon instead of drawing a symbol like an "e" you should do this. However, once you adapt to using gestures you may find it quicker and more fun, in addition, the final version will allow you to chain actions, and pre-record them, allowing elaborate procedures to simply be a wave of the mouse.

Have a look at the preview video of Gesture Magic (2.5MB AVI) to get a feel of what this software can do for you!

Gesture Magic will be available this Christmas season.... hopefully!

Vista Weirdness - Directory exists via an installer, but not in Explorer

This took me a while to figure out - today I went to install Jetspeed Portal Server and it needed access to a specific file, so I browsed to C:/Program Files. See the contents in the first screenshot.

I remember uninstalling Alien Arena 2007 but the directory was still there. Grrr, okay it didn't clean up when I uninstalled it... so I browse to C:/Program Files.... and guess what the directory does not exist - it's not there (see second screenshot).

What the hell? Is this some out of date index used by the installer to list directory contents or some weird Vista registry thing?



No. It is a feature called "VirtualStore". Simply put, older versions of Windows stored user accessible data inside Program Files, which is quite naughty since this should be a secure location and non user accessible (i.e. administrator only). What Vista does is redirect this sort of request invisibly to a user accessible area a "VirtualStore", and the program installs here, typically this is at C:\Users\< your user>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files. The same goes for the system registry. When you uninstall or delete the program from explorer or by uninstaller it may not necessarily uninstall it from this location - hence the problem of the Alien Arena 2007 directory.

For more details see this useful article